are teh vice the and loose for lose.

Illegitimi non carborundum.

wait, what...ewwww

It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine

"The arguments here are often so subtle and fast that I can barely ketchup."

Where I came from (both time and place), it was spelled catsup.  Same stuff, but I like the old spelling better.   That's the Bohemian in me, I guess.  

there's only one way to find out...

I thought the difference was that catsup had sugar, and ketchup has deadly High Fructose Corn Syrup.

- derumi (del-me)
"Bobby Fischer? Man, that guy is crazy!" - Mike Tyson

Wouldn't compensating the organ donor's heirs increase the "non-zero" chance of not getting full medical treatment in borderline life or death situations? I think that at the very least the public apprehension of the same would increase.  If so, how would monetizing organs increase supply either in the short or long term?

Am I a great person? Hell no - by most metrics I'm pretty much an asshole. -TSlothrop

Keep going that way and you've also destroyed capitalism...I can see why you wouldn't want to go there.

Apply that idea on a wider scale, and you've just killed Medicare and welfare. Arguably, that's not the direction you intend to go.

That's not exactly analogous, because quite a few people who end up collecting Medicaid and welfare (and most people who collect Medicare and Social Security) DO pay into the system.  They may not pay in as much as they take out, but they do pay.  On top of that, if those people ever get off welfare and start making decent money (something that does happen, occasionally) they are expected to pay taxes.  Additionally, all taxpayers receive some benefit from welfare programs because (arguably) they prevent our fellow countrymen from starving or from becoming such an unhappy, desperate underclass that they attempt to revolt and overthrow the system in some way.  Welfare keeps the poor fat & happy instead of lean and angry.  These added benefits simply aren't there when we're talking about organ donation - you don't get any benefit at all from giving your organs, right now, other than the mental benefit of feeling like you're doing the right thing, and unlike welfare there's no parallel to the idea that you are paying into the system because sometime down the line you yourself may need to take advantage of its safety net.

But, both those links were about the same case.

Illegitimi non carborundum.

Also, "everyone does it" is a defense with a long history going all the way back to kindergarten.  Just because someone who tried to harvest an organ says that everyone does it doesn't mean that everyone does it, any more than someone who steals your milk and cookie is an expert on how many people steal milk and cookies.

It happens -- and a lot more often than organ donation advocates would prefer to admit.

If there are truly all of these wretched organ wranglers out there just waiting to slice you up and take your innards, I'm guessin' that they'd not give a flyin' fuck whether or not you had a signed organ donor card somewhere on your person. In other words, I'm not seein' any risk differential between the willing and the unwilling.
But hey, feel free to give in to the hysteria if it makes you feel safer.

Somewhere in my soul, there's always Rock -n- Roll... Joe Strummer

If I ever felt that our society was developing a significant risk of people being killed for their organs, I would favor a much more radical solution than merely the requirement for a signed consent card - a requirement which, as you point out, actual organ thieves would ignore anyway.  Instead, we could just prohibit all organ transplantation from human donors.  Eventually, if we can work out the technical details, artificial organs or cloned organs (probably made from stem cells) are much better anyway, since they can be produced whenever needed, and will avoid problems such as immune system response, and the transmission of disease from the donor to the host.  Artificial blood, again if it is ever perfected, is also much better than donated blood.  That is the direction that medical research must take, to really resolve these problems.

In addition, organ transplantation is a relatively expensive procedure, and aside from all the other concerns, we may also have to think about efficient allocation of limited health-care resources in an over-strained economy.  But ultimately I would like to see an affluent, advanced world in which anyone needing a new organ can get an artificial one easily, and the average human lifespan is pushed well into the second century.  Until then, we have to deal with the complexities of the organ donation system.  

I'd argue that most of the life and death decisions get made in the field. When you do something stupid and end splattered all across the pavement, or drop dead inside your house from a massive heart problem, or whatever it is usually the responding ambulance personnel who decide what to do. When I was an EMT organ donation status never ever came into deciding whether or not to "work up" somebody or leave them for the coroner (who usually rolled in several hours later which seems quite detrimental to harvesting any usable organs). In such severe cases we didn't even have time to check their wallet for any information, in fact most of those times their valuables were secured by the cops.

I know it is completely anecdotal, but that was just my experience. I never knew which of my patients (or any) was an organ donor. Furthermore, given the relatively common rates of organ transplant failure it seems letting somebody die who is otherwise savable just to get their precious bodily tissue is downright retarded. And unethical. And illegal. And a bunch of other stuff.

Wow...I'd immediately leave someone with such little regard for my wishes.
The funny thing is, there are a lot of people who feel the exact same way.  

So do you leave over the hypothetical overriding of your wish when you actually agree?

The whole thing makes my head hurt.

"It was an ancient rule of Hawaiians that no one should hurt another bodily, or through theft of goods or through injury to feelings.These were the only sins."

A little late, at that point.

or you could come back and haunt them...

woooWOOOwooo

It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine

The EMTs can add the sticker to your license when they pull your mangled body from your wrecked car.

- derumi (del-me)
"Bobby Fischer? Man, that guy is crazy!" - Mike Tyson

Because it would require less paperwork.

It is easy to buy small plaster models of what you think life is like.