Surreal wrote:

Can we agree on a less extreme policy? I suggest that it should be standard to send out letters asking about whether you want to give up your body for organ donation on death as soon as you are of legal age. I don't think that arguments about it being "rude", "creepy" or "taboo" are strong enough to make that a bad idea.

The problem with an "opt-in" policy is that people are lazy. They probably won't even read the letter and throw it away in the the bin.

If we want to make quick and effective change regarding organ donation, I believe there are two policies of consideration:

1) The aforementioned police-state dystopian-society style forced organ donation upon death. Although people would complain about the lack of freedom to choose not to donate, this policy would do more good than harm (more lives saved). However, there is a second option:

2) An "opt-out policy." In other words, by default, you implicitly agree that your organs are up for donation upon your death, UNLESS you opt-out of the policy beforehand. This policy takes into account laziness while still allowing freedom for those who want it. Most people wouldn't care about this policy like they wouldn't care about most policies, so they wouldn't opt-out of it. However, for those vocal few who care enough to whine about their perceived lack of freedom, they have the option of opting-out of this policy.

I can't see any disadvantages about option 2. Can anyone?

vix86 wrote:

That won't affect the kind of change that qwerty wants. Its already that simple in the US in most places. All you have to do is stick a sticker on your driver license and generally your body will be treated as an organ donor should paramedics find you dead at an accident or something.

For my proposed opt-out policy, let's make that sticker go on the driver license by default. Let's also make that sticker extra sticky and hard to peel off so that only those who feel strongly about NOT donating organs will have the motivation and time to peel the sticker off completely, instead of giving up a few seconds in ("nah I don't want to donate my organs *scratch* *scratch* damn this sticker is so hard to peel off. Oh what the hell, my organs won't be of any use to me when I'm dead anyway").

Last edited by qwertyytrewq (2012 October 12, 10:27 am)

vix86 wrote:

However, I suspect the real reason no one does opt-in is more to do with the fact that many people are not simply keen on the thought of having their body hacked to pieces as soon as the doctor goes "Yep, he's dead! Cut'em up!"

If that's the case, then as long as they (anti-organ donating people) realize that they are being selfish with the knowledge that they could have given so much to someone else (life) while giving so little or nothing (their organs which are of no use to their lifeless corpse).

qwertyytrewq wrote:

Surreal wrote:

Can we agree on a less extreme policy? I suggest that it should be standard to send out letters asking about whether you want to give up your body for organ donation on death as soon as you are of legal age. I don't think that arguments about it being "rude", "creepy" or "taboo" are strong enough to make that a bad idea.

The problem with an "opt-in" policy is that people are lazy. They probably won't even read the letter and throw it away in the the bin.

If we want to make quick and effective change regarding organ donation, I believe there are two policies of consideration:

1) The aforementioned police-state dystopian-society style forced organ donation upon death. Although people would complain about the lack of freedom to choose not to donate, this policy would do more good than harm (more lives saved). However, there is a second option:

2) An "opt-out policy." In other words, by default, you implicitly agree that your organs are up for donation upon your death, UNLESS you opt-out of the policy beforehand. This policy takes into account laziness while still allowing freedom for those who want it. Most people wouldn't care about this policy like they wouldn't care about most policies, so they wouldn't opt-out of it. However, for those vocal few who care enough to whine about their perceived lack of freedom, they have the option of opting-out of this policy.

I can't see any disadvantages about option 2. Can anyone?

vix86 wrote:

That won't affect the kind of change that qwerty wants. Its already that simple in the US in most places. All you have to do is stick a sticker on your driver license and generally your body will be treated as an organ donor should paramedics find you dead at an accident or something.

For my proposed opt-out policy, let's make that sticker go on the driver license by default. Let's also make that sticker extra sticky and hard to peel off so that only those who feel strongly about NOT donating organs will have the motivation and time to peel the sticker off completely, instead of giving up a few seconds in ("nah I don't want to donate my organs *scratch* *scratch* damn this sticker is so hard to peel off. Oh what the hell, my organs won't be of any use to me when I'm dead anyway").

There are complications with people perhaps not finding out about the policy, due to no access to good education, having immigrated into a country and not understanding information given because of language difficulties etc.. It'd be virtually impossible to entirely avoid cases of people who would definitely have opted out, if they'd known they had to, getting cut up. I don't think that it would be possible to construct a fail-safe system. So yeah, even if the policy was implemented in one of the Westernized democratic countries of today, I think it would be repealed soon enough once lawsuits start trickling in. Opt-out is great in principle, but real issues with knowledge spreading mean that it cannot be implemented today, IMO.

Huh, I didn't know that. Cool. I wonder how they solve the possible issues I brought up. Like with immigrants who don't know the language very well.