Expanded transplantation, and life extending technology more generally, raises many questions. What price is too high for another year of life? If I'm entitled to a billion dollars of personal consumption, why would I not spend all on another year of life? After all, I'm dead otherwise.

And if I can somehow entitle myself to this level of consumption, by writ of my influence within the state, why wouldn't I? "The rich" are rich because states enact forcible proprieties channeling control over vast resources toward a few individuals. That's just a fact. It'll always be a fact.

Federal employees, for example, are very "rich" in terms of their entitlement to health care, even if we don't describe them this way. I haven't seen precise statistics, but retired Federal employees undoubtedly consume much costly, life extending health care, because they're simply entitled to it, and hardly anyone says "no" when asked to accept a bit more life.

Their research suggests that if we moved from an opt-in to an opt-out system, availability of organs would go way up.

Their research suggests that if we moved from an opt-in to an opt-out system, availability of organs would go way up.

I don't have a serious problem with it, but I see no reason for the opt-out. Enacting rights for the dead is archaic and counterproductive.

I suspect that a lot of those that die aren't suitable as donors anyhow, due to age.

In effect, transferring ownership of their bodies to other agencies upon death.

Enacting rights for the dead is archaic and counterproductive.

It's not the non-existing rights of the dead, but the rights of survivors, that matter here. I don't know how the law works here, but it appears to me that ownership of, or at least, responsibility for, the body of the deceased transfers to legal survivors, usually relatives.

It's not like the donor gets to spend it.

Gosh; I'd like to give your child life, when I die, but I'll just take it with me unless I see some coin.

Social stigma can go along way. Morticians can paint clown faces on those who didn't donate.

Actually, the donor WOULD get to spend it. Not only as a living kidney donor, but potentially also as prepayment for donation upon death. Payment to heirs would also help relieve a person's burden during life of providing for his heirs, as is often wished by the elderly.

Government payment to donors for kidneys in Iran has apparently solved the renal transplant shortage in that country.

It is the bloody paternalistic and irrational age-old antimaterialist money-hating bigotry that is behind the current organ shortage, and responsible for the unnecessary deaths of thousands of Americans every year.

It is morally repugnant that people are not allowed to sell their organs. It is also a prohibition sadly endorsed by nearly all physicians including leading transplant surgeons. This is just another example of why physicians are far too paternalistic to be allowed to influence government policy.

"No one would dream of suggesting that medical care is too vital or sacred to be treated as a commodity, or to be bought and sold like any other service."

What planet is he living on? Advocates of a government health care monopoly routinely make this argument.

Perhaps my family needs to be taken care of after my death. Is your child more important than mine? Perhaps…only to you.

Or maybe I want my organs sold with the funds going to medical research or some charitable cause.

If relatives, or a deceased's appointed heirs, want to sell the body for this useful purpose, I don't have a fundamental problem with that either; however, I don't favor some unlimited right of relatives or heirs to do whatever they like with the body, because it has value to the living and no more value to the deceased.

I hate when people do that.

It's not like the donor gets to spend it."

No, but the donor's family gets money to pay the funeral expenses and to cover other costs. Consider it to be the equivalent of a variable benefit term life insurance policy. The amount payable to the beneficiaries would vary based on which organs were suitable for transplant.

Wow, mother nature built in a system of death upon organ failure, and we have learned to circumvent that for a brief period, perhaps even a few years!

So, if I get a liver transplant that will mean I get to see the whole season of American Idol, Dancing with the Stars, teaching the grandkids what they think is ridiculously archaic in the first place, make that first playoff game for the Texans, maybe create the new theory of interspatial white holes that eat up interstellar conversations?

I personally have no dog in the hunt, but in my own opinion when one's organ(s) fail, it is nature's way saying Adios.

Buy them, sell them, leave me out.

"So, if I get a liver transplant that will mean I get to see the whole season of American Idol, Dancing with the Stars, teaching the grandkids what they think is ridiculously archaic in the first place, make that first playoff game for the Texans, maybe create the new theory of interspatial white holes that eat up interstellar conversations?"

vidyohs,

No worries…

You will not receive the liver because some bureaucrats in Washington DC cooked up a statistical model that deems your demographic as being ineligible for the transplant.

:')

Yes brother, my attitude at soon to be 68, is that if'n I ain't done it by now then I ain't missing anything if I go.

And, my living will says let me go if I can't feed myself or take care of my bodily functions, including clean-up. Just let me go. Don't waste any money.

Woke up this morning
Put on my slippers
Walked in the kitchen and died
And oh what a feeling!
When my soul
Went thru the ceiling
And on up into heaven I did ride
When I got there they did say
John, it happened this way
You slipped upon the floor
And hit your head
And all the angels say
Just before you passed away
These were the very last words
That you said:

Chorus:
Please don't bury me
Down in that cold cold ground
No, I'd druther have "em" cut me up
And pass me all around
Throw my brain in a hurricane
And the blind can have my eyes
And the deaf can take both of my ears
If they don't mind the size
Give my stomach to Milwaukee
If they run out of beer
Put my socks in a cedar box
Just get "em" out of here
Venus de Milo can have my arms
Look out! I've got your nose
Sell my heart to the junkman
And give my love to Rose

Repeat Chorus

Give my feet to the footloose
Careless, fancy free
Give my knees to the needy
Don't pull that stuff on me
Hand me down my walking cane
It's a sin to tell a lie
Send my mouth way down south
And kiss my ass goodbye

Repeat Chorus.

And I think, listening to it is even more fun than the lyrics

:>)