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Organ donation
Hmm, I've been pondering this decision on and off today and it still seems utterly perverse.
Assuming that a living related donor is likely to provide the best match for a transplant ie. the ill grandmother is unlikely to ever have a better match than her own dead daughter then it makes sense that the organ goes to that person first as there's less risk of rejection and thus greater likelihood of success.
I don't see what's unethical about a gift with reservation ie. to my family first then if they don't need any of my organs they can go into the general pool. If you can 'ethically' give someone a kidney whilst alive, while not once you're dead. If you're a parent of a kid who needs a heart transplant and you die, why shouldn't you have been able to express in a binding fashion that your heart go to your daughter if you're a suitable match and then if it's not it can go to whoever's at the top of the transplant list. [possibly there's an argument that there would be an incentive to murder relatives to get their organs for transplant purposes, but I don't think of it as particularly strong] Why not allow people to put blood relations and family/friends first?
And yeah, I shouldn't speak ill of the dead, but think how much less hassle there'd be here if the dead woman had done more than express a deathbed wish but had started the process of becoming a living donor.
Assuming that a living related donor is likely to provide the best match for a transplant ie. the ill grandmother is unlikely to ever have a better match than her own dead daughter then it makes sense that the organ goes to that person first as there's less risk of rejection and thus greater likelihood of success.
I don't see what's unethical about a gift with reservation ie. to my family first then if they don't need any of my organs they can go into the general pool. If you can 'ethically' give someone a kidney whilst alive, while not once you're dead. If you're a parent of a kid who needs a heart transplant and you die, why shouldn't you have been able to express in a binding fashion that your heart go to your daughter if you're a suitable match and then if it's not it can go to whoever's at the top of the transplant list. [possibly there's an argument that there would be an incentive to murder relatives to get their organs for transplant purposes, but I don't think of it as particularly strong] Why not allow people to put blood relations and family/friends first?
And yeah, I shouldn't speak ill of the dead, but think how much less hassle there'd be here if the dead woman had done more than express a deathbed wish but had started the process of becoming a living donor.
no subject
There is no obligation to leave your wealth to the poorest person...
no subject
No, but we do require wealthy people to pay a significant proportion of their estate in inheritance tax, which at least in theory is used for the good of the community as a whole (I realise the execution is deficient.) I also think one important difference between organ donation and financial legacies is that the latter require negligible public resources (which are more than offset by the tax), whereas organ donation requires considerable resources from a health service that is already stretched. It seems important to me that as far as possible, the allocation of communal resources should be prioritised by need and likely outcome.