We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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The Vampire State Ah, the children of the night! What sweet music they make:
Plans by Gordon Brown to make everyone a potential organ donor unless they actively “opt out” will be roundly rejected by the Government’s official advisory body next week, The Times has learnt.
The Prime Minister and the Chief Medical Officer for England believe that thousands of lives could be saved by introducing “presumed consent” – where everyone is automatically placed on the organ donor register unless they or their family object….
The recommendations are not binding on the Government and ministers may still bring legislation forward.
Of course they will. They must feed.
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And why did this august body recommend against the ‘opt-out’ system?
Was it out of their carefully-considered conclusion that this is the only system consistent with the idea of a free society and individual liberties?
Was it out of their well-founded fears of the abuses that might very well follow as the result of the idea of ‘presumed consent’?
No, of course it bloody wasn’t.
From the Telegraph reporting:
‘The group ordered to look into the system as a possible solution to a shortage of donors is due to report at the start of next week. It will recommend that ministers work to increase the number of donors but is expected to favour a situation where donors still register to donate organs after their death.
The group is understood to have come under pressure from Muslim organisations to keep the opt-in system. ‘
Forget the idea that HMG policy is formed with at least a passing hat-tip to Enlightenment values – what counts now in the decision-making are the beliefs of a 7th-century death cult, which have nothing to do with your inalienable right to decide what to do with your body, and everything to do with their medieval beliefs that arrving in heaven minus a kidney offends their Invisible Sky Being.
Expect the banking crisis to be addressed by policy decisions formed by reading the dismebowelled entrails of a halal-slaughtered goat. Or some such.
llater,
llamas
I couldn’t access the continuation page for this article, so I didn’t see the portion that llamas quoted. It certainly doesn’t surprise me, though.
What I liked was the headline: “Brown’s organ donor plan is rejected by scientists”. If you look at the makeup of this panel (the Organ Donation Taskforce), it is comprised of “healthcare professionals, lawyers and ethicists.” Where are the “scientists”?
For those who haven’t read it, find a copy of “The Tomorrow File”.
If people agree, as the British public has, along with many other “publics”, with the idea that they belong to society, then society will dispose of them as it, and its power structure, sees fit.
It is the logical conclusion of collectivism. Why would anyone be shocked or surprised?
About a decade ago, the US Congress passed a law allowing our privacy to be invaded unless we opted out. It’s a disaster, and is tantamount to removing our privacy unconditionally; you never know when you’ve sent all of the right forms to all of the right jerks.
I can’t see why anyone objects,surely we can trust that nice Doctor Shipman?
If there is an organ shortage why doesn’t the state just pay those prepared to opt in? Am I missing something fundamental here? Why would this be impossible? It seems the most logical way to meet demand…
Given that some of us cannot donate blood because we have had hepatitis in the past, I wonder how “they” plan to ensure that the organs are donated by healthy donors ?
Or perhaps the goal is the creation of Soylent Brown ? Talk about something not being halal !
Ah yes. My electric utility offered an “opt in” to donate the “extra”, to the next nearest dollar, of every months bill to the philanthropic venture of their choice. It didn’t work out so well, now it’s “opt out”, just like the DO NOT CALL unsolicited telephone advertising scheme.
Yep, they CHARGE to the fifth decimal place, with the usual
added “mystery fees”.
“…roundly rejected by the Government’s official advisory body…”
And that stopped Gorgon over the re-classification of cannabis?
The logic of socialism would seem to dictate that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one. So the question then is, why haven’t they made the donation of a kidney by the living compulsory? The national DNA database of all citizens would allow optimum matches to found ensuring a high probability of transplant success. After all, if your one kidney failed prematurely some time later then you’d get one taken – at gunpoint – from another “citizen.”
why doesn’t the state/NHS just pay people to be posthumous organ donors?
Because we are their property. You don’t pay for things you already own, do you?
Okay this is stupid, sometimes you people let your libertarianism run away with you. I hate the nanny state too, but anyone who has ever waited on a donor list would have little patience for one of your sanctimonious lectures. As would, I suspect, most of the people sneering here, who would turn out to be utter hypocrites in this matter if their lives were on the line.
Some dude liked riding a motorcycle, now his dead and his perfectly healthy kidney will be buried with him why? Oh, because he owned it in life so.. again, why? Opt IN if you’re a selfish fuck, or some ignorant muslim scumbag, otherwise let someone else have a shot at living.
Amos: Feel free to be an organ donor. I have no desire to stop you. If altruistic concern for their fellow man is not motivating sufficient numbers of donors (and given the shortages at the moment that seems to be the case) what is wrong with providing a financial incentive for people to do so? Why does the first response always have to a coercive or manipulative one?
Amos,
Suspect away, but I suspect that most people here would no more demand semi-compulsory organ donation if their lives were on the line than they would demand people be robbed of their inheritances to pay for the life-saving drugs they couldn’t afford.
The surgeon who performs the operation gets paid. The pharmaceutical companies and makers of surgical instruments get paid. Saving lives does not generally override people being able to expect to be paid for doing so. If we didn’t have enough doctors, could we justify compelling people to do the job for free?
(Although there’s nothing wrong with socially disapproving of the uncharitable.)
There are lots of charities who would love for people to have to opt out of giving. But the purpose of the market is to optimise resource allocation. It’s the mark of the Socialist mind to think it knows better how other people should spend their resources, and to spend it for them.
If you think lives are more important than money, and that people wouldn’t mind much donating anyway, then why not pay a small amount for them? If it works?
Amos-
I smoked for fifteen years.
All of your lungs are belong to me. I need them to do important things. Why are you being selfish about this? I only want one! I need it!
I’ve been a blood donor forever. I’m registered as both an organ and a bone marrow donor (and the last one actually costs the DONOR money, to be tested and catalogued). And yet, if the US ever adopts any form of compulsory donation or “opt-out” (“Oh, I’m sorry Mrs. Fernwood, but your husband’s opt-out paperwork has errors, so we’re taking his corneas and kidneys and everything else-you can sue us, but all of his organs will be dead in ten hours so we have to start immediately, and you’ll never even get a temporary injunction in that time. I’m sure you understand.”) I will immediately buy a carton of Camel straights and then patronize a prostitute, thus making all of my organs unusable.
Because I don’t mind volunteering for things that I think are worthy, but I will not be voluntold.
Amos,
Thankfully they can’t do brain transplants because I would pity the poor sap who could end up with yours.
You have obviously not understood anything about libertarianism. It is quite telling that for people like you, someone who does not agree with this policy (which is quite different from saying that they would not be donating, obviously a difficult concept for you to grasp) is a selfish bastard when it is nothing of the case.
And once presumed consent comes in (as it will – they never give up), what will happen if your name is slightly mis-spelled on the list (“Must be a different person”) or they can’t access the database, or the whole thing has been left in a train by some admin assistant, or the office-of-looking-up-databases doesn’t work on Sundays or it’s a Bank Holiday in Mumbai (where the office-of-looking-up-databases is located), or if they are just in a bit of a hurry and forgot their password, well then, the default position will be what, I wonder?
Vampire L’Etat.
Too much Rice, not enough garlic.
EVIL SOCIALISTS STEELING ARE ORGANS.
Amos is spot-on; the level of screaming-queen sanctimony is quite incredible.
How can you be so precious about these abstractions (and they are abstractions) of property and rights when you’re dead, and that other people might live?
What do you intend to do with your privatised organs when you are brain-dead?
Ruth Maxwell wrote:
‘What do you intend to do with your privatised organs when you are brain-dead?’
and the answer is simple:
That’s None Of Your Business. My organs are mine, and the only opinion that matters about what will happen to them after I’m gone is Mine – not yours, and certainly not some State bureaucrat’s.
If the State can decide that the default position is that it will simply take your organs – regardless of what your opinions in the matter might be – then the State can decide that the default position is that it will simply take anything that you own – regardless of what your opinions in the matter might be.
If the thinking is that the medical needs of others supercede your rights in your own body, then what’s to stop the State from making blood donation compulsory? After all, it won’t kill you – and it’s so ‘that other people might live’. And when blood donation is compulsory, then what’s to stop the State from making bone marrow donation compulsory? After all, it won’t kill you – and it’s so ‘that other people might live’. And so it goes.
These are simply not matters where the State should be able to use its monopoly of force to compel people to use their bodies in ways they choose not to. Even if the goal appears worthy. If the goal is to increase donation rates and save the lives of those who need transplants, then there are 101 better ways to do that. But the State, of course, always and immediately resorts to its favourite method – compulsion. As an added bonus, this approach will require the production of another vast and complex database, requiring many State employees to administer it, and all of them with index-linked pensions and reliable votes for more of the same.
The money spent on this and subsequent ‘studies’ – which Mr Brown has already said that he will ignore if they do not give the answer he wants – would have been enough to offer every licensed driver in the UK a £5 discount on the renewal of a driver’s license. I would take a small wager that such a discount alone would have been enough to double the rate of organ-donor registration.
llater,
llamas
the radio is telling me send dead animals for Christmas.
yaa we are their property. You don’t pay for things you already own,..
i dont think we have to pay for it ….
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fusion
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Star in your own personalized vampire romance novel! YOU select the heroine and hero and best friend. Full-length novels starring YOU!
Personalized Vampire Romance Novels from Book By You!–Personalized Vampire Romance Novels from Book By You!
yaa we are their property. You don’t pay for things you already own,..
i dont think we have to pay for it ….
———
fusion
———
Star in your own personalized vampire romance novel! YOU select the heroine and hero and best friend. Full-length novels starring YOU!
Personalized Vampire Romance Novels from Book By You!–Personalized Vampire Romance Novels from Book By You!