Should an altruistic organ donor be allowed to restrict their donation to a specific group of people? (e.g. women, gingers)
An extreme version of this is: What should the German health service do if someone says they are willing to donate a kidney as long as it doesn’t go to a Jew?
On the one hand, nobody is forced to donate a kidney and by forbidding this we’re making things worse for an innocent patient. On the other hand, it can be seen as the state sanctioning this kind of discrimination.
In practical terms it's very normal for people to only donate a kidney because they have a specific recipient in mind.
Trying to say no, "you can not donate your kidney only to your son, you have to make the kidney available to everyone" does not make sense.
If you are running an anonymous donation facility then practicality comes into play. How realistic is it to keep tabs on all kinds of weird preferences? Matches are already hard enough. And how do you disclose responsibly?
From an ethical point of view you need to look at the big picture. It is not enough to say that this is a kidney that someone will get but would not if you don't allow discrimination. You have to also think about whether such a policy will encourage people specifying who otherwise wouldn't. And then a growing imbalance in recipients.
No. Organ “donation” after death should be compulsory. For living donors there should be a publicly funded bounty system where you either take the money or not. Donors and recipients don’t get to be picky.
Hmmm okay, but it has to be difficult to opt-out, kind of like how conscientious objectors have to go through a whole process to get out of military service.
If you respect someone when they are alive you should respect them in death too. Only a troll would say they’re okay with people fucking their own dead mothers or mocking dead political enemies.
I find it hard to believe you would genuinely be that composed and detached, if someone ran over your 3yo child and then used their head as a hood ornament for the lols.
Because living people who are sick might need those organs, which would otherwise just go to waste in your corpse. Also, it good to have a steady supply of organs from the deceased in order to avoid perverse and exploitative market situations.
The very fact you raise the possibility of perverse or exploitative markets means there’s cause for mistrust in any donor arrangement. We live in a capitalist world and here you are devaluing my body for who, some CEO? Lisa Marie Presley inherits a catalogue of copyrighted content and revenue streams but my family can’t get a penny for saving someone’s life?
Organ donation is a wonderful thing and I understand why our systems are “opt-in” by default but why can’t I opt out, if I don’t trust society?
You’re kind of talking about different things. Copyright should of course be abolished along with all private property. I don’t rule out compensation to your estate for organs harvested after death and there should definitely be a public bounty/reward system to encourage the living to donate.
You shouldn’t be able to opt out, or at least it should be very difficult to do so, because when you are dead what you have a say in that affects the living should be very limited, because those organs won’t matter to you anymore, and because those organs might matter very much to living people. Whether you trust society or not doesn’t matter anymore when you are dead.
Being ginger is not a protected class, so there is no legal restriction on descriminating (so long as you don’t successfully argue that gingers are a race, eg Scottish, but that’s a stretch).
However morally no, you shouldn’t have a say in it. Either way, usually you’ll be dead when the decision is made. Maybe not with kidneys, although with kidneys you tend to know who you’re giving it to - I don’t think anyone just randomly donates a kidney, like you would give blood.
I don’t think anyone just randomly donates a kidney, like you would give blood
You would be wrong about that, in 2021 more than 450 people in the US anonymously donated a kidney to a non-familiy member (source). This is the scenario I’m asking about. One of the arguments given is that just as we allow monetary donations to specific groups of people, why not organs.
Nobody knew your scenario before you explained it in detail. It is simply not happening.
Organisations don’t want to be bothered with such restrictions from a donor. Their principles are: fair and anonymous. It is hard enough already this way.
From my point of view you’ve just given an excellent argument against the philosophy that I will call, for lack of a better term, “beep-boop utilitarianism”. Allowing such a donation has an immediate, tangible and quantifiable benefit; but the norm you are eroding by doing so is much more valuable, and may be impossible to renegotiate if lost.
If you’re alive then you’re totally be within your rights to choose who to voluntarily help or donate something to. Don’t like the look of that homeless guy for whatever reason? Don’t give them money. You can be as racist or misogynistic or otherwise generally cunty as you like, and as long as it’s your personal money/time/organs and you keep quiet about your selection criteria you’re unlikely to have a problem.
However once you’re dead, if you want your dickish restrictions honoured then you have to write them down somewhere. And any organisation set up to manage organ donations that agrees to facilitate such restrictions is likely to find themselves on the pointy end of a discrimination lawsuit at some point.
What conditions are you imagining in which a donor is living but not aware of specifically who would be receiving the organ before agreeing? Tests need to be done to ensure compatibility, and a kidney is a lot to ask and probably wouldn't be agreed to unless it helps a loved one.
I feel like this is a strange premise whose goal is trying to try to move the line little by little until people are willing to say they're a little bit racist/sexist. Or until people are willing to admit they don't think others should have control over decisions made about their bodies. Be honest about your ends here instead of dreaming up fictions that make so little sense the answers are unproductive.
In Germany what you describe won’t be possible: organ donation from a living donor is only allowed if both person are quite close to each other (partners, family and so on). Organ donation from dead people is anonymous: the doctors that take the organs out of the dead person doesn’t know who receives them. Only Eurotransplant knows.
I think that’s a very good system. Organs should be given and received as anonymous as possible.
Excellent question. I have to put myself in their shoes. I don’t want my kidneys going to… a member of the North Korean dictatorship, or the CCP. Or any of the elite in Dubai. I don’t see anything wrong with my preferences there, so we would have to allow people to discriminate indiscriminately. I guess I would have to be in favour. There are people that I think are more deserving than others. Jeffery Dahmer isn’t getting my organs.
“Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement.”
I do not understand the concept of “deserving to live.” I did nothing to deserve life; it was given to me before I could do anything. Some people think that people can forfeit their “right to life” by their actions, but how can someone forfeit a right they never acquired?
I understand killing for practical reasons, in some cases, but claiming that everyone is born with a right to life that can be taken away is incoherent,
The way I see it you are under no obligation to bite that bullet just because of your understandable sentiment. It may be true that e.g. “My organs won’t go to Catholics” and “My organs won’t go to serial killers” are two sentences that have a similar structure, but this doesn’t at all mean they have the same moral weight, or that we as a society are compelled in some way to treat them equally.
TBH I'd rather donate to a serial killer that can realistically harm a dozen of people at most, than a person willfully supporting a global child molestation ring harming thousands annually and holding back the society for centuries.
What a deplorable take. Is the 10-year-old child living in the USA who says “I love my country” morally responsible for the war in Iraq? Is the 10-year-old Saudi Arabian saying “I love my country” morally responsible for 9/11? By what mechanism does your standard spare any human being at all, ever, from total moral condemnation?
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