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The reason I'm not an organ donor is simple. Everyone in the chain makes money: the OPO, the hospital, the doctor, and the insurance company. The only one who d

The reason I'm not an organ donor is simple. Everyone in the chain makes money: the OPO, the hospital, the doctor, and the insurance company. The only one who doesn't is my family, but they're the ones offering the scarce resource. If there were a pre-registered organ market then I would gladly opt-in if the price were sufficiently high. If no one else will work for free, I will not either.

ceejayoz 3y ago
Fine, but you should be ineligible to receive, in that case.
- renewiltord 3y ago
  Fine by me. I'm in a minority ethnic group here in the US. I'm not going to match that easily anyway. EDIT: Sorry to you ceejayjoz, I was trying to reply to others by adding info to this because the rate limit doesn't let me but that's going to get discussions confused. I edited it out once I thought about that. So I'm fine with this so-called donation being a de-facto self-insurance pool. If the terms are like that, then I opt out.
  - ceejayoz 3y ago
    > It's called "donation" not a "risk pool". Unsympathetic people get fewer donations throughout society, and I'm inclined to see someone who'd rather let their organs rot in the ground or be cremated when they could save lives as... quite unsympathetic.
  - CobrastanJorji 3y ago
    But doesn't that mean you're specifically planning to allow one or more members of your own minority ethnic group to die in order to prevent some other person from making some small amount of money off of you without paying into your estate?
Jemaclus 3y ago
As an organ transplant recipient who would have died 20 years ago without one, I hope you reconsider.
- renewiltord 3y ago
  I will. Please write your representative asking to reform NOTA to permit compensation to the estate through a 20% tax on all transactions involving an organ transfer. For the $700k liver transplant, it is not unreasonable that my family receive $140k. For the $20k the OPO receives, it is not unreasonable that my family receive $4k. Once NOTA is reformed, I will register to provide.
wara23arish 3y ago
I feel the same way.. Why can’t my family benefit from making money from my organs?
- delecti 3y ago
  Because then poor people are incentivized to kill themselves or their relatives to sell their organs.
  - renewiltord 3y ago
    A living kidney donor faces lower mortality risk than a logger but we allow people to be loggers. Explain that. We allow people to risk their lives to provide for their families, except in this way. Unless your position is that whenever mortality risk exceeds living kidney donor mortality risk we should immediately ban the job. If so, let's ban logging. We can take this to its absurd conclusion. On the other hand, Matt Yglesias points out why it's so much better to have a market here https://www.slowboring.com/p/solving-problems-by-letting-people https://www.slowboring.com/p/solving-problems-by-letting-peo... including for kidneys And specifically points out the plasma-donation situation as a contrast.
    - CobrastanJorji 3y ago
      I imagine it's because we find it morally gross to harvest organs from the healthy poor. I get that it leads to a lot of people dying who otherwise wouldn't die, and that's awful, but I think it's similar to prostitution. It makes sense to allow two consenting people who might agree to do something with each other for free to also do that same thing for money, but when you allow that, it tends to suddenly lead to a lot of people who are not actually very "willing." I think there are very real concerns that an "organic donation for money" industry quickly leads to a lot of trafficked people losing kidneys.
      - renewiltord 3y ago
        > I imagine it's because we find it morally gross to harvest organs from the healthy poor. That is correct. The objection is solely from having a high divinity quotient in one's moral foundations causing one to rationalize visceral reactions to an obviously sensible process. After all, the argument you then propose applies to egg donation, sperm donation, surrogacy, logging, and life insurance. People who might do it for free, might be coerced instead. And yet we have flourishing industries there and life is better for it.
Calavar 3y ago
> If no one else will work for free, I will not either. If you're deceased, what sort of labor are you doing exactly? To me, your argument seems to fall more along the lines of your body and organs being property that can be inherited by your family in the same was as cash, real estate, etc. Which is an interesting idea. But ultimately it's called "donation" for a reason. If you donate to, say UNICEF or Red Cross, you're also the only one in the chain who doesn't get paid.
- dotnet00 3y ago
  >If you're deceased, what sort of labor are you doing exactly? Keeping the kidney healthy so that it is usable upon death?
  - margalabargala 3y ago
    The one piece of labor necessary to become an organ donor is to check a box when applying for or renewing your driver's license. You have no obligation to do anything else or even think about it ever again. You can make exactly the choices you prefer without regard for your organ health, if you like.
    - dotnet00 3y ago
      They asked what labor you'd be doing to be compensated for upon donating an organ after death. Simply checking the box doesn't ensure that your organs are healthy enough to donate. The monetary compensation would be for keeping the organs in a healthy enough state to be actually donatable (rather than just potentially donatable, as is the case with just checking the box).
      - Calavar 3y ago
        If you make life decisions that keep your organs healthy enough to donate, the primary beneficiary of that isn't the organ procurement agency, it's *you*. You'll live longer and have better health. I wouldn't call optimizing your personal wellbeing "labor" or "work."
kelnos 3y ago
So you've chosen to potentially sentence a patient to death because you don't like the infra around the donation process? Basically the definition of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
stonogo 3y ago
There's a whole chain of novels by Larry Niven about what might happen when human organs enter a market economy. It assumes it works like any other closely-regulated market, producing a robust black market quickly dominated by organized crime. Also, none of the people in the chain you list are profiting from your 'scarce resource,' but from providing skills and facilities to enable transplantation. (Insurance companies are just parasites, no argument there.) Further, you left out the primary motivating factor behind the program: the recipient.
- astrange 3y ago
  > There's a whole chain of novels by Larry Niven about what might happen when human organs enter a market economy. It assumes it works like any other closely-regulated market, producing a robust black market quickly dominated by organized crime. This is like when people quote Pournelle's Law like it's a fact. The only thing this paragraph means, just like the only thing Pournelle's Law means, is that the person who wrote it is a Republican. It doesn't actually demonstrate anything factual or even related to reality. (You can get paid for plasma and sperm donations but there isn't a black market for those.) > Insurance companies are just parasites, no argument there. They provide insurance, and they're probably more aligned with your interests than the rest of the supply chain is.
  - tzs 3y ago
    > (You can get paid for plasma and sperm donations but there isn't a black market for those.) There were plasma black markets during and after the COVID pandemic [1][2][3][4][5]. There are black markets in sperm [6][7][8][9][10]. [1] https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/exclusive-coronavirus-pandemic-fuels-black-market-for-plasma-of-recovered-patients-1703332-2020-07-22 https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/exclusive-coronavirus-... [2] https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2020/07/iraq-coronavirus-plasma-blood.html https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2020/07/iraq-coronaviru... [3] https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2020/06/egypt-coronavirus-survivors-plasma-black-market.html https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2020/06/egypt-coronavir... [4] https://www.occrp.org/en/daily/12644-blood-plasma-black-market-emerges-in-pakistan-amid-covid-19-crisis https://www.occrp.org/en/daily/12644-blood-plasma-black-mark... [5] https://www.deccanchronicle.com/nation/medical-experts-warn-against-buying-black-market-plasma-882823 https://www.deccanchronicle.com/nation/medical-experts-warn-... [6] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-12370461/Facebooks-black-market-sperm-donation-industry-exposed-Wannabe-moms-poor-afford-30-000-IVF-lured-having-unprotected-sex-forced-meet-men-met-online-parking-lots-swap-semen-samples.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-12370461/Facebook... [7] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13298869/sperm-donors-black-market-inconceivable.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13298869/sperm-dono... [8] https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/world-news/wild-west-sperm-black-market-32583799 https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/world-news/wild-west-sperm-... [9] https://worldcrunch.com/culture-society/undercover-hunt-in-italy39s-black-market-for-sperm-donors https://worldcrunch.com/culture-society/undercover-hunt-in-i... [10] https://www.thehelper.net/threads/seedy-world-of-the-super-sperm-donors-inside-americas-black-market-of-men-who-father-hundreds-demand-natural-insemination-in-motels.193509/ https://www.thehelper.net/threads/seedy-world-of-the-super-s...
prmoustache 3y ago
[flagged]

ceejayoz 3y ago

Fine, but you should be ineligible to receive, in that case.

renewiltord 3y ago
Fine by me. I'm in a minority ethnic group here in the US. I'm not going to match that easily anyway. EDIT: Sorry to you ceejayjoz, I was trying to reply to others by adding info to this because the rate limit doesn't let me but that's going to get discussions confused. I edited it out once I thought about that. So I'm fine with this so-called donation being a de-facto self-insurance pool. If the terms are like that, then I opt out.
- ceejayoz 3y ago
  > It's called "donation" not a "risk pool". Unsympathetic people get fewer donations throughout society, and I'm inclined to see someone who'd rather let their organs rot in the ground or be cremated when they could save lives as... quite unsympathetic.
- CobrastanJorji 3y ago
  But doesn't that mean you're specifically planning to allow one or more members of your own minority ethnic group to die in order to prevent some other person from making some small amount of money off of you without paying into your estate?

Jemaclus 3y ago

As an organ transplant recipient who would have died 20 years ago without one, I hope you reconsider.

renewiltord 3y ago
I will. Please write your representative asking to reform NOTA to permit compensation to the estate through a 20% tax on all transactions involving an organ transfer. For the $700k liver transplant, it is not unreasonable that my family receive $140k. For the $20k the OPO receives, it is not unreasonable that my family receive $4k. Once NOTA is reformed, I will register to provide.

wara23arish 3y ago

I feel the same way.. Why can’t my family benefit from making money from my organs?

delecti 3y ago
Because then poor people are incentivized to kill themselves or their relatives to sell their organs.
- renewiltord 3y ago
  A living kidney donor faces lower mortality risk than a logger but we allow people to be loggers. Explain that. We allow people to risk their lives to provide for their families, except in this way. Unless your position is that whenever mortality risk exceeds living kidney donor mortality risk we should immediately ban the job. If so, let's ban logging. We can take this to its absurd conclusion. On the other hand, Matt Yglesias points out why it's so much better to have a market here https://www.slowboring.com/p/solving-problems-by-letting-people https://www.slowboring.com/p/solving-problems-by-letting-peo... including for kidneys And specifically points out the plasma-donation situation as a contrast.
  - CobrastanJorji 3y ago
    I imagine it's because we find it morally gross to harvest organs from the healthy poor. I get that it leads to a lot of people dying who otherwise wouldn't die, and that's awful, but I think it's similar to prostitution. It makes sense to allow two consenting people who might agree to do something with each other for free to also do that same thing for money, but when you allow that, it tends to suddenly lead to a lot of people who are not actually very "willing." I think there are very real concerns that an "organic donation for money" industry quickly leads to a lot of trafficked people losing kidneys.
    - renewiltord 3y ago
      > I imagine it's because we find it morally gross to harvest organs from the healthy poor. That is correct. The objection is solely from having a high divinity quotient in one's moral foundations causing one to rationalize visceral reactions to an obviously sensible process. After all, the argument you then propose applies to egg donation, sperm donation, surrogacy, logging, and life insurance. People who might do it for free, might be coerced instead. And yet we have flourishing industries there and life is better for it.

Calavar 3y ago

> If no one else will work for free, I will not either. If you're deceased, what sort of labor are you doing exactly? To me, your argument seems to fall more along the lines of your body and organs being property that can be inherited by your family in the same was as cash, real estate, etc. Which is an interesting idea. But ultimately it's called "donation" for a reason. If you donate to, say UNICEF or Red Cross, you're also the only one in the chain who doesn't get paid.

dotnet00 3y ago
>If you're deceased, what sort of labor are you doing exactly? Keeping the kidney healthy so that it is usable upon death?
- margalabargala 3y ago
  The one piece of labor necessary to become an organ donor is to check a box when applying for or renewing your driver's license. You have no obligation to do anything else or even think about it ever again. You can make exactly the choices you prefer without regard for your organ health, if you like.
  - dotnet00 3y ago
    They asked what labor you'd be doing to be compensated for upon donating an organ after death. Simply checking the box doesn't ensure that your organs are healthy enough to donate. The monetary compensation would be for keeping the organs in a healthy enough state to be actually donatable (rather than just potentially donatable, as is the case with just checking the box).
    - Calavar 3y ago
      If you make life decisions that keep your organs healthy enough to donate, the primary beneficiary of that isn't the organ procurement agency, it's *you*. You'll live longer and have better health. I wouldn't call optimizing your personal wellbeing "labor" or "work."

kelnos 3y ago

So you've chosen to potentially sentence a patient to death because you don't like the infra around the donation process? Basically the definition of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

stonogo 3y ago

There's a whole chain of novels by Larry Niven about what might happen when human organs enter a market economy. It assumes it works like any other closely-regulated market, producing a robust black market quickly dominated by organized crime. Also, none of the people in the chain you list are profiting from your 'scarce resource,' but from providing skills and facilities to enable transplantation. (Insurance companies are just parasites, no argument there.) Further, you left out the primary motivating factor behind the program: the recipient.

astrange 3y ago
> There's a whole chain of novels by Larry Niven about what might happen when human organs enter a market economy. It assumes it works like any other closely-regulated market, producing a robust black market quickly dominated by organized crime. This is like when people quote Pournelle's Law like it's a fact. The only thing this paragraph means, just like the only thing Pournelle's Law means, is that the person who wrote it is a Republican. It doesn't actually demonstrate anything factual or even related to reality. (You can get paid for plasma and sperm donations but there isn't a black market for those.) > Insurance companies are just parasites, no argument there. They provide insurance, and they're probably more aligned with your interests than the rest of the supply chain is.
- tzs 3y ago
  > (You can get paid for plasma and sperm donations but there isn't a black market for those.) There were plasma black markets during and after the COVID pandemic [1][2][3][4][5]. There are black markets in sperm [6][7][8][9][10]. [1] https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/exclusive-coronavirus-pandemic-fuels-black-market-for-plasma-of-recovered-patients-1703332-2020-07-22 https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/exclusive-coronavirus-... [2] https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2020/07/iraq-coronavirus-plasma-blood.html https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2020/07/iraq-coronaviru... [3] https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2020/06/egypt-coronavirus-survivors-plasma-black-market.html https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2020/06/egypt-coronavir... [4] https://www.occrp.org/en/daily/12644-blood-plasma-black-market-emerges-in-pakistan-amid-covid-19-crisis https://www.occrp.org/en/daily/12644-blood-plasma-black-mark... [5] https://www.deccanchronicle.com/nation/medical-experts-warn-against-buying-black-market-plasma-882823 https://www.deccanchronicle.com/nation/medical-experts-warn-... [6] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-12370461/Facebooks-black-market-sperm-donation-industry-exposed-Wannabe-moms-poor-afford-30-000-IVF-lured-having-unprotected-sex-forced-meet-men-met-online-parking-lots-swap-semen-samples.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-12370461/Facebook... [7] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13298869/sperm-donors-black-market-inconceivable.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13298869/sperm-dono... [8] https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/world-news/wild-west-sperm-black-market-32583799 https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/world-news/wild-west-sperm-... [9] https://worldcrunch.com/culture-society/undercover-hunt-in-italy39s-black-market-for-sperm-donors https://worldcrunch.com/culture-society/undercover-hunt-in-i... [10] https://www.thehelper.net/threads/seedy-world-of-the-super-sperm-donors-inside-americas-black-market-of-men-who-father-hundreds-demand-natural-insemination-in-motels.193509/ https://www.thehelper.net/threads/seedy-world-of-the-super-s...

prmoustache 3y ago

[flagged]