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Agreed. It reminds me of the article about how self-driving cars, by being safer, would worsen the organ waitlist.[1] Like, in what other context would you rai
by SilasX 2y ago
Agreed. It reminds me of the article about how self-driving cars, by being safer, would worsen the organ waitlist.[1]
Like, in what other context would you raise this concern about saving lives?
It's the same kind of dishonesty, picking out one hot-button source of pollution, apportioning out its health impact, and complaining about it alone.
[1] https://slate.com/technology/2016/12/self-driving-cars-will-exacerbate-organ-shortages.html https://slate.com/technology/2016/12/self-driving-cars-will-...
- pkaye 2y agoAs someone who got from an organ transplant, I'd still push for self-driving car and safer cars. My hope is pig organ transplants make it through trials soon. That could push a 7 year wait for kidney transplant down to a year which is a big deal because the long time on dialysis can have a lasting impact.
- paulryanrogers 2y agoCouldn't we just make donation opt out and solve the problem?
- pkaye 2y agoUS has the second highest deceased organ donor rate after Spain despite US being opt-in. https://www.irodat.org/?p=database#data https://www.irodat.org/?p=database#data I worry about a public opinion chaining on switching to opt-out in the US so it has to evaluated carefully. I'm guessing the US wait time is long because there are a lot of people with failing kidneys due to poorly managed diabetes and high blood pressure. But there are a whole host of auto immune and genetic diseases also. Now we have better drugs for treating diabetes like Ozempic and SGLT so hopefully that improves the situation for kidney failures caused by diabetes. I myself had an auto immune disease IgA nephropathy 10 years back but at that time there were hardly any drugs targeting it. I've since was on dialysis and recently got a kidney transplant. But the positive at the same time a half dozen drugs have been approved or under trial to slow down the progression of IgA nephropathy.
- rat87 2y agoFrom the article you linked > We’re all for saving lives—we aren’t saying that we should stop self-driving cars so we can preserve a source of organ donation. But we also need to start thinking now about how to address this coming problem.
- SilasX 2y agoIt doesn’t matter how much they try to walk it back and not sound so criminally insane. Refer again to my second paragraph: The issue is, would the author ever think of writing this article for any other instance of saving lives? If not, then it’s a case of selective focus, the same problem in this submission. I mean, why not just say the organ shortage is bad, without pointing the finger at the latest hip, hot button issue, out of all the possible life-savers?
- bombcar 2y agoYou could also use some other way of looking at the problem instead of "lives". For example, from some morbidly accounted points of view, reducing deaths of able-bodied young people by incidentally increasing deaths of older, organ-needing people results in more "able-bodied life years" saved or something. Of course, down this path too far and you start looking at prisoners and death sentences and organ harvesting, which I think most people would agree ain't right.
- rat87 2y agoI dont think they are walking anything back. They seem a lot more positive about self driving cars then a lot of people. The controversial part of the article for most would be the suggestion to an allow organ market The article is part of a series about challenges with future technologies. They note that 1/5 of donations come from traffic accidents and there is already a major shortage. If self driving cars reduce most accidents that will mean nearly 1/5 of donations will need to be replaced