Our new Indie Games subforum is now open for business in G&T. Go and check it out, you might land a code for a free game. If you're developing an indie game and want to post about it,
follow these directions. If you don't, he'll break your legs! Hahaha! Seriously though.
Our rules have been updated and given
their own forum. Go and look at them! They are nice, and there may be new ones that you didn't know about! Hooray for rules! Hooray for The System! Hooray for Conforming!
[Australia] Opt-out organ donation
Posts
o_O
This is a really bizarre argument.
Doesn't quite work that easily..
What safeguards? without a need for consent, there are no checks but a quick look into a database. If the person was unaware of the system or found it inaccessible (blamed from the need for opt-out) there is nothing.
A grieving relative's default expectation is not to find their loved one's body has been opportunistically mutilated and given away. That's what makes it important to discuss it with your loved ones - so that they won't have to cope with further shock or unexpected trauma on top of their grief. Loved ones have a habit of wanting to say goodbye and hospitals often allow them to do so - that process is inhibited when the body is shall we say "depleted", tissues and organs removed and the body disfigured.
That's one of the significant reasons why organ donor programs extoll the need to discuss the choice with family. Because the additional impact upon the body and upset it can cause to loved ones can be significant and even damaging if they are forced to face it on top of their loss.
Opt-in or opt-out: not talking to family about being a donor = gruesome surprise and callous disregard for their feelings at such a tragic time.
Opt-out: not talking to family about not wanting to be a donor - irrelevant, because apparently they shouldn't get a say and if your wishes are met your body will be whole.
On the whole, that's a pretty poor attempt to turn an argument around.
Aside, if by chance you are a registered donor and haven't done so, you need to talk to your family and make sure they understand your wishes and what to expect. There are more people than yourself and the recipient who are affected by the choice to donate and your apparent disregard for that is quite frankly terrifying.
No, again it's not and you've yet to show it to be.
You propose it solely on the conjecture that it will do so, despite the failure of such system in other countries to provide the miracle gain you assume it would provide. Sweden languishes at the bottom of the donation tables despite having opt-out in place - by your logic it should be topping the charts. Topping the charts is actually Spain - who's admirable figures are credited, not to opt-out - but to the radical changes they made to their system and investment in infrastructure.
Crazy - there are isses that should be addressed, solutions and possible systems which could achieve a higher donation rates and even better utilize current rates - all retaining consent and respect for people's beliefs. That actually address the factors influencing the shortages occurring in the donor system. Yet, through sheer conjecture alone, you cling to opt-out seemingly because actually doing something to save a life is too much to ask despite it's apparent all-encompassing importance. That, and the notion of pursuing something that might not upset all those silly fundies or worse, share the burden a little mroe evenly, is completely unthinkable.
You keep demanding that people show why opt-out isn't a good idea and people have pandered to you. Now, why don't you demonstrate why, among all the options, opt-out is the best and preferable solution and why it's miraculous impact hasn't been seen everywhere it has been implemented.
I'll even help you along and provide a link to a parlimentary review of organ donation which looked into and dicusses the matter and issues affecting it. It might just get you started and even contains a few figures regarding the matter.
Linky
I'm sorry, this is a moral/ethical debate, not a legal one. I'm not going to stand for that "no one's tricked" and it being bullshit. You don't like it? Argue the legalese of why it's okay, and why governments have or deserve the right to make laws in regards to people's bodies. Both in life and death.
Is that in the bible? Or ANY religious text?
"How to properly prepare the dead 2000 years from now..."
I'm sure it's in the ones that do support it. I very much doubt it's in the bible specifically. However the be-all holy book is not necessarily the only religious text. I wouldn't be too surprised if the bible tells people not to desecrate their body by allow the removal of any of their flesh.
Yes, because they still have to ask you. And that's not even the same thing.
Just in case.
"Oh no this man is dying, quick give him some blood."
"Oh no this man died, quick chop up his body so we can take his organs."
Not, quite.
I implore you. Prove to me opt-out is better. Other than "it saves lives." I want real proof, hard numbers, and multiple sources.
Compare several opt-in countries with several opt-out countries. We need to get to the bottom of this circular runabout! Post haste!
It saves more lives? Well... you just said that didn't count.
http://troublethinking.wordpress.com (Updated Wed) http://twitter.com/#!/Durandal4532
Well I need more proof, because you saying it doesn't mean it's true.
Or are you saying I have to be concious to say, "yes, you can give me new blood from the bank?" Are you saying that's the same argument as assuming you can use my corpse like a used parts bin because the post office lost the mailer?
Oh, alright. I'd say it's pretty evident that having more organs would probably solve organ shortages, but sure, at least that's an internally consistent request.
http://troublethinking.wordpress.com (Updated Wed) http://twitter.com/#!/Durandal4532
Except that nobody has yet actually shown that an opt-out system will actually provide more organs than an opt-in system. See, you might think this is self-evident, but it has been contested and numbers have even been provided showing very little correlation between opt-out and actually having more organs available.
Especially if this opt-out system involves family members being able to say no, since familial objection seems to be where a huge number of potential organs get lost.
EDIT: Especially since under an opt-out system, everybody that wants to be can just presume they're a donor and not have to worry mirite? At least until they die and oops! The family they never talked to about it says no. You think there won't be just as high of a rate, if not higher, of familial rejection in cases where somebody never actively indicated a preference while alive?
No, I said tell me how it's actually better at saving more lives, and prove it with multiple sources.
And also, while you're at it, prove if it's better than a universal polling system.
Good point, McDermott, I hadn't considered that the familial objections would be equally likely in an opt-out system. Though that could change if it became the cultural standard, I think.
Is there a reason we allow families to object now? I mean, if you've got the donor thing on your card, why should we believe your cousin when they say you really wanted to keep your kidney?
http://troublethinking.wordpress.com (Updated Wed) http://twitter.com/#!/Durandal4532
I agree completely. I don't think anyone has the right to negate your choice, no matter how close they were.
I might make an exception to a significant other, but no one else. Should anyone have the right to claim that you had intended something different than what you had already specified?
What if your family tried to push their overbearingness onto your request. For instance, let's say I decided to be an organ donor but I was ousted from my family because of my religious beliefs. Then when I die, they choose to negate my request because of their beliefs. Is this too much of a double-edged sword?
We shouldn't, actually...if you have actively consented to donation while alive. Which is why I figure a system of universal polling is better in pretty much every way, provided you make it legally binding. Increases the donor pool while still getting consent from all donors. Win-win...win?
Hell, you could even give people an extra option or two...like explicit consent (legally binding, family can't object), stated intent (leave choice to family, but let them know what you'd have chosen), stated non-intent (same as above), and explicit lack of consent (legally binding).
Though, as was pointed out earlier, apparently in Australia under the current opt-in program people still have this option (consent vs. intent) and a great deal choose the latter...so it's questionable whether most people would actually leave their family out of it anyway given the option. Still, I can't help but think that a system which universally records everybody decision/intent will probably lead to the same gains in donorship, and could theoretically lead to more (since, unlike an opt-out system, having to make the decision may spur some people to talk to their families about it as well).
Opt-out seems to me like a system that is no better than opt-in, and likely significantly worse that universal polling. The only real benefit I'm seeing from opt-out is that maybe, if we're really lucky, we might get to fuck over some random religious people.
True. But at the same time I don't think forcing, at some point, grown-ups to make this decision and legally holding them to it is the worst idea in the world, and definitely comes in above the alternative, which seems to be just assuming their consent anyway.
I don't think it's the right of any government to make that sort of decision or requirement.
(I think the UNOS system is a more charity-esque situation -- which might be a different, opt-in isn't really a "law" more of an individual choice, however opt-out makes it into law)
I think we can all agree to this.
I don't know about "all." Remember, we have had some people explicitly state getting the organs of those who might have objected as a benefit of opt-out. Nobody on this page though, I don't think.
Okay, for the sake of political correctness, the majority of us can agree this is the best approach to things.
But with the opt-out system being proposed, you still run into the issue of next-of-kin overriding the deceased's (passive) decision. Because pretty much every opt-out system still allows the family the final word...it's just presumed that if they don't object, then you can take the organs.
At which point I'll again note that familial objection is a huge factor in the loss of viable organs.
At which point it seems like finding a way to allow every person (or as close as possible to it) to conveniently make an active decision in the matter (one way or the other) would be preferable. As for next-of-kin trying to override the decision by the deceased to give if we make it just a smidge too easy, that seems like something that would be easily fixed by legislation...by legislation less far reaching that assuming consent from everybody.
I still fail to see how this can conceivably be a better representation of people's intent than universal polling, whereby every last person has their intent explicitly recorded.
I'm OK with respecting someone wishes, be they religious or not. Your plan isn't paper-work-fuck-up proof either, so I don't know why you keep bringing it up.
I just don't see the harm in taking somebody's organs when they don't have a family and haven't said not to. Alternately, if you want to make it an argument about my hatred of religion fuck their religious beliefs, rabble rabble rabble.
This is obviously issue enough that it gets people talking, so a clever government would raise the idea in parliament, let the media get wind of it (which has happened a little here but not nearly enough) and then opt instead to perhaps, I don't know, run some useful government ads about how to become a legally binding organ donor.
Because as far as I know it's essentially an unasked question here - no one wants to talk about it.
The other thing I'm wondering here is if there's any data on the circumstances or reasons families typically cite for obstructing organ donation, because as the papers cited earlier in this thread pointed out one of the difficulties is that for a family member there's no obvious difference between organ donation and not - the (dead) family member is still breathing and warm to the touch. No one necessarily appreciates that all that happens when they say no is that they turn off the ventilator - how accepting can we expect people to be of the final state of the individual in question?
Indeed, but I'm thinking lately that there's basically nothing other then a few very old stickers on filing cabinets in my parents practice (at least in NSW), and more importantly there is absolutely nothing about it even for the non-legally binding stuff at the RTA.
Which I suppose goes back to my "how many people tick the box" question - because that would lend some credence to the notion that the real problem of organ donation lies elsewhere.