Organ Donation, Or, Sally Satel Makes Me Puke

[NashVegas]

My attitude on the subject has come a full 180 since receiving my first drivers' license, and yesterday's NY Times magazine essay by Sally Satel is the greatest example I can think of that explains why.

You can call it a gift, and 25 years ago it might have been, but now it's really a demand for potential donors to cough up spare parts for people who are either too self-obsessed or too emotionally immature to perceive how this demand devalues human life in general while trying to prop up their own.

Theoretically, kidneys should be in booming supply. Virtually everyone has two, and healthy individuals can give one away and still lead perfectly normal lives. Yet people aren’t exactly lining up to give. At the beginning of 2005, when I put my name on the list, there were about 60,000 people ahead of me; by the end of that year, only 1 in 9 had received one from a relative, spouse or friend. Today, just under 74,000 people are waiting for kidneys.

I wanted my donor to be completely anonymous so I could avoid the treacherous intimacy of accepting an organ from someone I knew. I would have gladly paid someone to give me a kidney, but exchanging money for an organ is a felony in this country.

Take a strong look at the rationalization going on in the first sentence, and the emotional immaturity of the second paragraph. "But everyone has a spare!" Here's another keeper:

The obvious place to find a donor is your own family, but that was not really an option for me. My parents were not alive and would have been far too old to help me even if they were. I have no siblings and only three cousins; I hadn’t seen two of them since high school; and the third I see maybe once every two or three years. I couldn’t call out of the blue with this news. I could just imagine my relatives tsking into the phone, “You only call when you want something.” Indeed.

Now, here's the killer: the woman who wrote all this is a card-carrying, speech-giving, media-talking member of the American Enterprise Institute, a right-wing think tank that wants to reform, ie, eliminate, welfare. Among so-called compassionate conservatives, alongside "family values," the strategy is to promote the revival of private, often church-related, charities to replace the latter-day government role in helping the needy.

Good time to bring out the old adage: beggars can't be choosers. If you're poor and you need to go to a charitable organization for a hand-out, you've got to go to one whose arbitrary rules for giving apply to you, and you've got to be willing to swallow your pride, if necessary. And of course, you have to demonstrate gratitude.

Funny how Sally Satel aligns herself with a group that's all for forcing people in need to swallow it for the sake of survival, yet she herself is unwilling. Heaven forbid ...

I guess it's just for the little people.

[AX10]

1. Conservatives strike again!

beat you and defend this BULL!

Sally Satel needs to STFU!

Conservatives have a double standard. "Fuck you at all costs, but when it comes to themselves, please please help me".

It's been this way since the beginning of time.

[sandnsea]

2. ????

What does one asshole have to do with organ donation?

[phantom power]

3. It's a well-studied trend in Conservatives...

they are generally the party of "fuck the other guy" until one of them becomes personally affected by some Issue-X, and then they will (individually) suddenly become a big supporter of Issue-X, and yet they will absolutely retain their general policy of "fuck the other guy" with respect to all other issues.

In other words, they have no imagination and no general capacity for empathy. If an issue affects them, they support it. On an issue by issue basis.

[baldguy]

4. People like this will gladly put a precise value on human life.

What ever the market will bear. An individuals' loved ones should look upon their corpse as a resource to be exploited; harvest the usable organs & auction them off to the highest bidder. And if you are unable or unwilling to put up the cash & make another person suffer so that you may live, then you deserve to die.

[knitter4democracy]

5. Well, my odds of needing a kidney transplant are higher after last year's surgery.

I lost my right kidney last year to a big tumor (it looked and acted like cancer, but hopefully they're right in thinking it wasn't cancer), so my odds have gone up. Having a kidney taken out for any reason ups the odds of the other one failing in your lifetime and you needing a transplant.

If I had to have one, I wouldn't want it donated by a living donor. This surgery sucks bigtime, and having been through it already, I know that. I couldn't do that to anyone. I wouldn't pay for it, either, figuring it's from a person so strapped for money that they'll undergo a horrible surgery just for the money. Honestly, I'd rather die first. I don't say that lightly, either. I've had the surgery, and it's not worth any money anyone could throw at the donor. Granted, mine was a bit more than most, but still--it's major surgery, and it sucks to recover from.

I'd wait my turn on the list. That's fair. Yes, it probably means years of needles and crap and maybe dying before an organ comes available, but life sucks, you know? She should wait her turn and be happy that she's alive.

[SoCalDem]

6. I have a 42 yr old friend who's been on that list for 8 years now

she will not get a kidney (most likely) since she has polycystic kidney disease, and is a poor candidate.. we all got tested anyway, but no one was a match for her:cry:

[knitter4democracy]

7. Oh crap. I'm so sorry.

Are they helping with the symptoms and pain and all? That one's painful, if I remember right. I'm so sorry.