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While I totally support the opt-out approach (or indeed, no option to opt out) I wonder if we need a new term - as it doesn’t seem like a ‘donation’. ‘Donation’

• casefields 6y ago
  I refuse to be a donor. If they want me then make a real donation, say some money towards funeral expenses. I would sign up in a heartbeat. And I've been plenty more altruistic when it comes to tissue donations. About 10 years ago I came up as a match to a stranger through the Be The Match Foundation. I went through the whole process and gave that lady bone marrow. So I'm not just a grubby meanie out for a buck. Everyone else in the chain is getting paid, there's no reason the donor should be left empty handed.
  • majormajor 6y ago
    If you want change, take action in a way that will matter. Withholding an organ donation in a way that will never be visible to the people at the relevant time isn't it. So some poor sap who needs an organ is gonna get fucked because your "principled" stance against "the system" will keep you from donating? You think they'd have a problem with your estate getting money? You think that marginal additional expense would cause them to be like "welp, better just die then." I wouldn't oppose this "compensate the estate of the donor" idea at all, but to refuse to save lives as a result is insanity, especially because your refusal, and some posts about it on the internet, will amount to 0.
  • solidasparagus 6y ago
    So why do you refuse to be a donor?
    • Igelau 6y ago
      > Everyone else in the chain is getting paid There's real money floating about at every step except for the one where they acquire the organ from the deceased's estate. It's a fair point.
      • crooked-v 6y ago
        The reason for that is to remove the financial incentive to donate any one specific organ, so that poor people don't end up as a one-kidney one-lung underclass.
        • srl 6y ago
          Well, in this case, it would only be the dead poor, right? We're talking about donating organs after death. Just as it's hard to justify not being willing to donate organs (because "you're dead, what do you care"), it's also hard to justify not paying those who do on the grounds that it's exploitative.
          • crooked-v 6y ago
            ...at which point you've got the same perverse incentives as life insurance policies back before 'we don't pay out in the case of suicide' clauses.
            • srl 6y ago
              Ah, that's a good point, and retrospectively obvious. I missed that.
        • Igelau 6y ago
          The commenter I quoted specifically suggested money toward funeral expenses. That's the context: a recognition and respect of the value the body parts had to the owner rather than an assertion of entitlement. There isn't some weird perverse incentive in that that's going to carve out an underclass of organ growers.
  • ebg13 6y ago
    > I refuse to be a donor. If they want me then make a real donation, say some money towards funeral expenses. You refuse to save lives at literally no cost to yourself or anyone you know unless someone pays your family off? > there's no reason the donor should be left empty handed The donor is dead! Hands don't get any emptier! > So I'm not just a grubby meanie out for a buck. Ok, let's see... Cost to you? 0. Cost to your family? 0. Benefit to others? You could save several lives. Will only do it for? Money. Yup, no conflict there.
    • srl 6y ago
      This sentiment is understandable (and apparently popular), and I suppose GP deserved either a well-reasoned personal attack or a snarky reply... but I don't think it merits a snarky personal attack.
      • ebg13 6y ago
        What if I'd split it into two separate replies?
    • DrScump 6y ago
      You refuse to save lives S/he's already been a living bone marrow donor, presumably already saving a life at considerable risk to oneself (it's surgery for the donor). That's already enough to deserve immunity from snarky insults.
      • ebg13 6y ago
        > That's already enough to deserve immunity from snarky insults. No, I don't think it is. This is a refusal to do something that costs literally nothing purely out of spite. If anything, that negates the good will that might have been earned by the prior act. "I helped someone once, but I'd like everyone else to just die even though it costs me _nothing_ to save them" is not an admirable stance.
  • ForHackernews 6y ago
    In most cases, the organ donor will be "empty handed" because they're already dead. But nobody is forcing you to save lives at no cost to yourself (again, because you'll be dead) -- go ahead and opt out.
  • AcerbicZero 6y ago
    Seems reasonable to me. If organ donation is valuable enough to a society to justify infringing upon an individuals rights to collect those organs, then society can at least offer some level of compensation. If a society no longer believes it requires the willing consent of the individual to engage in these kinds of actions.....well that opens up a few other problems.
  • theonemind 6y ago
    Hmm. What do you think about systems where you personally can't get those sort of organs (for yourself, from someone else) unless you opt into donation yourself? Would you find that adequate compensation, or would the possibility of not getting organs you need sway your decision?
  • nothal 6y ago
    As a fellow Be the Match donor, I don't understand your philosophy. As you know, going through the donation process is, aside from scheduling appts & actual donation, not that much work on your end. I spent probably 20 hrs total to donate and save someone's life. Most of that time was me lying in a bed to donate or having samples taken (with all costs covered by BTM). Compare that to the paid case manager or doctors//nurses that had to coordinate tons of resources to let me be able to donate. If anything, maybe you should reflect on why you were ok with that donation (and it being freely given) but you're not ok with doing even less as a tissue donor yet not being paid.
  • chimprich 6y ago
    If you're refusing to be a donor, would you also refuse to accept a transplant if you needed one? Seems only fair
    • Igelau 6y ago
      Your argument might satisfy a peculiar revenge fetish, but in terms of policy, the whole public is only healthier if the WHOLE public is healthier -- even the people you think are wrong. No ifs, ands, buts, or whining about fairness. The recipient's status in the program should be of no interest and strictly private until death. If only participants in the donor program could benefit from the donor program, then people who are ineligible to donate (like under age 18) would be unwilling sacrifices on your altar to Fairness. After all, what are they contributing? Furthermore, if I'm in need of a vital transplant, there's likely enough systemic damage from the malfunctioning organ that the organs I've got are of questionable use as future transplants.
      • chimprich 6y ago
        > Your argument might satisfy a peculiar revenge fetish A "peculiar revenge fetish" is strong words considering your argument is so weak. > the whole public is only healthier if the WHOLE public is healthier In general I agree, but this is definitely not an issue with transplants. The demand far exceeds supply, so the question is how you sort the queue. Of course, refusing to be a potential organ donor also affects the health of the WHOLE public. If you refuse to be a donor, the total number of organs available for transplant is reduced. > people who are ineligible to donate (like under age 18) Where did you get the idea that under 18s are not eligible to be donors? I think everyone would agree, though, that under-18s' views would not make them ineligible as recipients. > unwilling sacrifices on your altar to Fairness If it's not them who are getting sacrificed on the Fairness altar, it is someone else who could be a recipient.
        • Igelau 6y ago
          > Where did you get the idea that under 18s are not eligible to be donors? Trolling, or did you just not RTFA?
• jonny_eh 6y ago
  Donation, or donor, need not imply giving in a charitable sense. It can strictly mean providing blood or an organ, even if paid. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/donor https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/donor
• cmdshiftf4 6y ago
  Government mandated organ harvesting has a great ring to it. Apparently not to the statists of HN though!
• Fnoord 6y ago
  When you are dead, your possessions are no longer yours (as you legally don't exist anymore). As part of your final sacrifice, you can give something back to a person in need. (As a side mark, a modern Jesus would've been a donor, IMO.)
  • lpaaa 6y ago
    > As a side mark, a modern Jesus would've been a donor, IMO. Yes, he probably would have. But he would not have forced other people to opt-out. This is what people do not understand in this thread.
    • Fnoord 6y ago
      Those are legally not people anymore. They were people.
      • akll 6y ago
        Could this meandering obfuscating "argumentation" stop? The people arguing for the law are putting up an extremely embarrassing intellectual show here. They snipe, engage in "organ shaming", change lines of argumentation, move goalposts and generally behave like indoctrinated teenagers who picked up some lines in a course.
        • Fnoord 6y ago
          There is no obfuscation here. The default here, is to assume that people are good, loving people. If you would be ill, and you'd require a replacement organ or you'd die, you'd be grateful if someone who passed away would donate that organ to you. My father, in his last ~5 years, was on kidney dialysis 3 times a week. It really hurt, seeing those people in pain, but it was the most beautiful department I ever saw of a hospital. Because people leave for quality of life, temporarily better. They come in exhausted. Heck, they often leave exhausted. But next day is gonna be better. There's no dept. which regularly provides a bigger impact on such a time based term. Now, no my father was too old for a transplantation. He was low on the list. But I have seen young people on that dept. too. Young people of an age where normally their life is flourishing. Young people who, normally, have a full life ahead. Young people of whom my father could've been father, if you get what I mean. It really requires a lack of empathy, or some kind of convincing of a religion (which cannot be proven true either, and is in contrast with what Jesus would've educated), that you say that after you passed away you don't want your organs to be donated. Well, then have the balls to put in the effort to say so. Because the vast majority of people, are loving and good people. On top of that, in The Netherlands (where the default was recently changed as well), most people are not even religious anymore (making the default donor more adequate). Plus, its an investment in a life, which should on the long term be good for the economy, as well as the happiness of families.
• VWWHFSfQ 6y ago
  It's involuntary organ harvesting
• ASalazarMX 6y ago
  How about calling it "organ reuse"? You're not donating because they're taking them away unless you explicitly say no, but reuse is fine. It's not like we need those organs anymore, except for them to rot or burn.