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| Donor rates: absolutely offal | |
A healthy skeptic is always suspicious of a government organization who
uses the word 'need'. While not all government employees would have actually
read Karl Marx, nearly all
would have been influenced by the 'to each according to their needs'
wisdom. Your ABC reports that "Health authorities say Australia desperately
needs more people to sign up to the organ donor register". It bemoans that Australia continues to have one of the lowest donation
rates in the world despite being a world leader in organ transplant
surgery. It must be John Howard's fault. Something to do with living in an economy
instead of a community, or something. There are of course many good reasons not to sign up for organ
donation. Like the fact that your family will be put under all kinds of
pressure by over-zealous medical elites to turn off your life support instead
of waiting around for a possible (even if unlikely) recovery. And the
possibility for being topped by someone with a compatible kidney-challenged
relative at the top of the waiting list is pretty high too ('what a freaky
accident - he was left with just enough to brain function to keep his vital
organs working until they got him to the hospital'). On the other hand there are good reasons to go on to the program too. Like
saving someone's life. Even saving the life of a complete stranger sounds like
a pretty a good option if the only cost is the donation of few hundred grams of
useless and unwanted offal. But there could be one really really good reason to go on the organ donation
list which is denied us by the compassionate caring elites: the opportunity for
a cash-strapped grieving family making a few bucks auctioning off the spare
parts. I have owned a number of cars which have finally died beyond repair. Every
carcass has been sold to the local wreckers for a few bucks. Admittedly I have
always felt that the wrecker got the better end of the deal but I have still
been happy to get the money. If I had met a similar end to the wife's old car
(even four wheel drives die when you run them into concrete walls at high
enough speeds), then I would have pretty happy for the family to sell all the
spare parts. And use the money for the kids' education or something. Before launching into a hysterical leftist 'what about the
little children?' let me just say that that's the point!. Even
the leftists might ask themselves the question: what if you lost the
breadwinner in the family? Wouldn't you like to get a few bucks for recycling
their parts? If you were the breadwinner - wouldn't you want to make your
family a bit better off from the proceeds of an organ clearance auction? It's not really clear what the organs from a healthy body would be worth, but
kidneys alone must easily be worth a five figure sum. The liver must be worth
something, and those bits of the eyes they use to help the blind see ..? All
good stuff. All valuable. All worth money. So why doesn't this happen? Apparently because money is evil, and we don't want to cheapen the act of
organ donation by tainting with the dirt of money. Or maybe because families
might even choose which individuals to give, or sell, their loved one's organs
to, instead of letting medical elites decide. (The horror the horror!) Because given a choice between letting people choose for themselves, and
letting people die, we would rather let people die. It's for the good of
society. It's called 'compassion'.
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