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>Speaking of morals, is it really moral to not promote and invest in kidney transplants... This is not an easy subject, but I think there is nothing immoral ab

>Speaking of morals, is it really moral to not promote and invest in kidney transplants... This is not an easy subject, but I think there is nothing immoral about letting a human being die if their organs fail...It can be thought of as being sad. But not immoral or evil. Also, since death is inevitable, I think in most cases, it is better not to drag it out. And on the whole, it is better not to provide alternatives like this. People, out of obligation, won't let a family member go, (even if they are of old age). So in the end, even people who are not financially sound will be forced to pay huge sums of money... Just wait until hospitals build a market around this, and you can bet that it will be followed by immense social pressure (perpetuated by these markets), to follow this norm. In the end, the net suffering increases... There is also another thing another user pointed out by another user when this topic came up before. When this has become norm, then you will be expected to pay things via your organs. If you are not financially sound, then your son/daughter will probably expect you to pay for their higher studies via your organs..People will ask, hey why don't get a car, so and so companies have schemes based on the health of your kidneys...(unthinkable today, but hey we are talking about how morals change, right?) The thing is, for most people, leading a poor (as far as you are not starving) life is better than having some temporary prosperity by selling a kidney and leading degraded life till the end.... Now. That is evil.

LeifCarrotson 9y ago
I disagree vehemently with your viewpoint. I fear that you've been trapped by the vivid image of an impoverished, innocent, victimized person being blackmailed in a dark alley into selling their kidneys (picture someone like Fantine from Les Misérables) and try to stop that at all costs. That's wrong, though: Nothing is worth stopping at all costs, that denies the meaning of the word "cost". We need to objectively weigh the costs of that image against the vague tragedy of early death in a hospital bed multiplied by the 18 million people currently dying in need of a transplanted kidney. And added against that sum, consider that the vast majority of donors would not be victims at all. A few points which I think deserve consideration are: > This is not an easy subject, but I think there is nothing immoral about letting a human being die if their organs fail...It can be thought of as being sad. But not immoral or evil. It is most certainly evil if there is a perfectly good spare kidney just sitting around in a nearby abdomen, and someone dies because they don't have access to it. Human life is intrinsically valuable because of the consciousness and experiences of the mind which is enabled by functioning organs. If the organs cease to function, that does not reduce the value of that life, or imply that the 'time was right': every death is a tragedy. > Also, since death is inevitable, I think in most cases, it is better not to drag it out. Death is temporarily avoidable (evitable?). It cannot be infinitely extended (yet), and you can talk about weighing the costs of people suffering for extended periods of time at great cost in hospital beds or from mental illness against the happy people who made unlikely recoveries....but this weighing does not reasonably extend to kidney failure. Kidney replacement often takes people who were otherwise healthy and happy from suffering an unnecessary early death into many more years of happy, healthy life. When death can be avoided with this level of success, it should be. > The thing is, for most people, leading a poor (as far as you are not starving) life is better than having some temporary prosperity by selling a kidney and leading degraded life till the end.... Now. That is evil. Three responses to this: First, this will not be the epidemic you describe. Second, the life of the donor is not degraded as you describe. Third, consider the recipient. Demand in this market will have a very small cap. You can't sell more kidneys than there are people who need transplants. There are currently about 20 million people worldwide who need transplants, so only 1 in 350 people will have an opportunity to profit from this market. You won't have a large class of society who depend on the ability to fund their children's education with one parent's kidney and buy a retirement home with the other. The donor of a kidney will be unlikely to suffer a degraded life. Most people really don't need two kidneys to survive. Kidney donation is a very safe procedure, and donors typically live a full life after donating. It's prudent to perform regular check-ups, and there is a slightly increased risk of needing a transplant (after all, you only have one kidney left!) - but in a world where kidneys are available to those who need them, that's less of a problem. Also, remember that temporary prosperity used to, as you describe, fund an education may lead to permanent prosperity, and that poverty often does result in a reduced lifespan and sometimes in starvation. Finally, even though these donors are a small population, are not negatively affected by donating and could in fact be positively affected by it, consider the recipients. Even if there were a significant negative result to the donors, it might result in more positive utility overall. The people in need of a kidney could, in one world, suffer in a hospital bed on a dialysis machine for the short remnant of their life. In the other, they could live many more happy years with a transplanted kidney.
- babyrainbow 9y ago
  >I fear that you've been trapped by the vivid image of an impoverished, innocent, victimized person being blackmailed in a dark alley into selling their kidneys (picture someone like Fantine from Les Misérables) and try to stop that at all costs. No. That is not true. >It is most certainly evil if there is a perfectly good spare kidney just sitting around in a nearby abdomen... You seem to imply that it is "spare" and "just sitting around", doing nothing, which is not the case. I somehow find that statement extremely disturbing... >Human life is intrinsically valuable because of the consciousness and experiences of the mind which is enabled by functioning organs. If the organs cease to function, that does not reduce the value of that life, or imply that the 'time was right': every death is a tragedy. On a bigger sense, human life is worth as much as any other life. You are saying it is worth more because of "consciousness" and "experience"? I am sorry, I am not sure what to make of it or how it is relavant to the discussion.. >Demand in this market will have a very small cap. You can't sell more kidneys than there are people who need transplants. Oh. Wait till this market is in full bloom, and we can see transplantation "prescribed" quite frequently... >The donor of a kidney will be unlikely to suffer a degraded life... Ok. What happens when the remaining kidney of a poor donor fails? I see you have addressed it in your comment. But you hand waves it by saying it is not a problem if they can afford it, when the whole reason they sold the kidney was they were poor! >The people in need of a kidney could, in one world, suffer in a hospital bed on a dialysis machine for the short remnant of their life.. People in need of money, of food, of basic necessities of life, of a roof about their head, has been suffering for ages. The rich has their mansions, studio apartments, their suv's and limos. They didn't think that the money they have lying around is "spare", and didn't re-distribute their wealth among the poor and needful... Now the rich wants to "help" the poor by enabling them to sell their kidneys!! Oh the hypocrisy!
  - logfromblammo 9y ago
    The alternative to a donor organ market is additional financial incentives to develop and improve implantable artificial organs. Currently, you need a bulky external machine for hemodialysis. At first, they were available only in hospitals, then in outpatient clinics. Now people can keep such machines at home, and use them as they sleep. I would predict that these machines would first become cheaper, until hitting a cost threshold, then become smaller, until hitting the size of a large suitcase. Then they would have an implantable component, and an external satchel-sized wearable component. Then development would stall until the patents run out. As dialysis treatment runs about 6% (!) of the Medicare budget, one might think that the US would have a significant incentive to fund research into reducing the cost of treatment for kidney disease. Sadly, this does not appear to be the case. Most of that money is now going to private dialysis companies that have optimized their business models around the Medicare payment rules. Their incentives are not to improve patient care, but to suck as much federal money out of the trough as possible.

LeifCarrotson 9y ago

I disagree vehemently with your viewpoint. I fear that you've been trapped by the vivid image of an impoverished, innocent, victimized person being blackmailed in a dark alley into selling their kidneys (picture someone like Fantine from Les Misérables) and try to stop that at all costs. That's wrong, though: Nothing is worth stopping at all costs, that denies the meaning of the word "cost". We need to objectively weigh the costs of that image against the vague tragedy of early death in a hospital bed multiplied by the 18 million people currently dying in need of a transplanted kidney. And added against that sum, consider that the vast majority of donors would not be victims at all. A few points which I think deserve consideration are: > This is not an easy subject, but I think there is nothing immoral about letting a human being die if their organs fail...It can be thought of as being sad. But not immoral or evil. It is most certainly evil if there is a perfectly good spare kidney just sitting around in a nearby abdomen, and someone dies because they don't have access to it. Human life is intrinsically valuable because of the consciousness and experiences of the mind which is enabled by functioning organs. If the organs cease to function, that does not reduce the value of that life, or imply that the 'time was right': every death is a tragedy. > Also, since death is inevitable, I think in most cases, it is better not to drag it out. Death is temporarily avoidable (evitable?). It cannot be infinitely extended (yet), and you can talk about weighing the costs of people suffering for extended periods of time at great cost in hospital beds or from mental illness against the happy people who made unlikely recoveries....but this weighing does not reasonably extend to kidney failure. Kidney replacement often takes people who were otherwise healthy and happy from suffering an unnecessary early death into many more years of happy, healthy life. When death can be avoided with this level of success, it should be. > The thing is, for most people, leading a poor (as far as you are not starving) life is better than having some temporary prosperity by selling a kidney and leading degraded life till the end.... Now. That is evil. Three responses to this: First, this will not be the epidemic you describe. Second, the life of the donor is not degraded as you describe. Third, consider the recipient. Demand in this market will have a very small cap. You can't sell more kidneys than there are people who need transplants. There are currently about 20 million people worldwide who need transplants, so only 1 in 350 people will have an opportunity to profit from this market. You won't have a large class of society who depend on the ability to fund their children's education with one parent's kidney and buy a retirement home with the other. The donor of a kidney will be unlikely to suffer a degraded life. Most people really don't need two kidneys to survive. Kidney donation is a very safe procedure, and donors typically live a full life after donating. It's prudent to perform regular check-ups, and there is a slightly increased risk of needing a transplant (after all, you only have one kidney left!) - but in a world where kidneys are available to those who need them, that's less of a problem. Also, remember that temporary prosperity used to, as you describe, fund an education may lead to permanent prosperity, and that poverty often does result in a reduced lifespan and sometimes in starvation. Finally, even though these donors are a small population, are not negatively affected by donating and could in fact be positively affected by it, consider the recipients. Even if there were a significant negative result to the donors, it might result in more positive utility overall. The people in need of a kidney could, in one world, suffer in a hospital bed on a dialysis machine for the short remnant of their life. In the other, they could live many more happy years with a transplanted kidney.

babyrainbow 9y ago
>I fear that you've been trapped by the vivid image of an impoverished, innocent, victimized person being blackmailed in a dark alley into selling their kidneys (picture someone like Fantine from Les Misérables) and try to stop that at all costs. No. That is not true. >It is most certainly evil if there is a perfectly good spare kidney just sitting around in a nearby abdomen... You seem to imply that it is "spare" and "just sitting around", doing nothing, which is not the case. I somehow find that statement extremely disturbing... >Human life is intrinsically valuable because of the consciousness and experiences of the mind which is enabled by functioning organs. If the organs cease to function, that does not reduce the value of that life, or imply that the 'time was right': every death is a tragedy. On a bigger sense, human life is worth as much as any other life. You are saying it is worth more because of "consciousness" and "experience"? I am sorry, I am not sure what to make of it or how it is relavant to the discussion.. >Demand in this market will have a very small cap. You can't sell more kidneys than there are people who need transplants. Oh. Wait till this market is in full bloom, and we can see transplantation "prescribed" quite frequently... >The donor of a kidney will be unlikely to suffer a degraded life... Ok. What happens when the remaining kidney of a poor donor fails? I see you have addressed it in your comment. But you hand waves it by saying it is not a problem if they can afford it, when the whole reason they sold the kidney was they were poor! >The people in need of a kidney could, in one world, suffer in a hospital bed on a dialysis machine for the short remnant of their life.. People in need of money, of food, of basic necessities of life, of a roof about their head, has been suffering for ages. The rich has their mansions, studio apartments, their suv's and limos. They didn't think that the money they have lying around is "spare", and didn't re-distribute their wealth among the poor and needful... Now the rich wants to "help" the poor by enabling them to sell their kidneys!! Oh the hypocrisy!
- logfromblammo 9y ago
  The alternative to a donor organ market is additional financial incentives to develop and improve implantable artificial organs. Currently, you need a bulky external machine for hemodialysis. At first, they were available only in hospitals, then in outpatient clinics. Now people can keep such machines at home, and use them as they sleep. I would predict that these machines would first become cheaper, until hitting a cost threshold, then become smaller, until hitting the size of a large suitcase. Then they would have an implantable component, and an external satchel-sized wearable component. Then development would stall until the patents run out. As dialysis treatment runs about 6% (!) of the Medicare budget, one might think that the US would have a significant incentive to fund research into reducing the cost of treatment for kidney disease. Sadly, this does not appear to be the case. Most of that money is now going to private dialysis companies that have optimized their business models around the Medicare payment rules. Their incentives are not to improve patient care, but to suck as much federal money out of the trough as possible.