Summary

We quote “we are talking lives here”. Yes, we are, but unlike the opposition we believe that there are some things more general, not only tons of insignificant facts that don’t contribute to the debate. With all due respect to the opposition we believe that the opposition’s argumentation was weak and in the summary, we will try to prove why giving 1st chance to people is more important than giving 2nd chance to those who destroyed their life because of their past lifestyle. The opposition has all the time been wining that they “value lives of people above everything”. Yes, we too. The opposition should understand that it is impossible at the moment to save everybody. If you save an alcoholic, because a young sporty guy could wait, you could get the situation where the young guy is not sporty anymore, since his disease progressed to the extent that a transplant won’t help him. The alcoholic lives while the young man dies. The opposition thinks that it is fair, we don’t. The point is that even if at the moment a young guy could wait, no one is sure whether he will get his liver, since the number of organs available fluctuates all the time. Look at this story. [[http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/sep/13/organ-donation-transplant-waiting-list]] Initially everybody thought that it will take him only 3 months of waiting, since in his blood group the donation rate was high. Unfortunately, the rates of donations have unexpectedly dropped, so now after 7 months no one is sure whether he will get his organ. We propose to give first of all organs to non-alcoholics and then see if we could treat alcoholics. This is both efficient and fair. In our summary, first of, we will clarify the misunderstandings about our model and explain why the Status Quo is inefficient, afterwards, we will argue (1) whether alcoholics were responsible for their actions, (2) how efficient is it to give organs to alcoholics and, in the end, (3) is the government the one to decide. First, let’s clarify the plan and model. It is no doubt that the liver transplants are scarce resource, which requires a different plan than the Status Quo, since more than 2,000 of people are dying while waiting for their liver each year in the US alone [[http://www.ustransplant.org/csr/current/fastfacts/datatour.aspx]]. The opposition brought up a point that our plan is arbitrary because we do not include smokers and drug addicts, but again we have to clarify that under the Status Quo doctors have the right to deny liver transplants for people, for example with Hepatitis B, so that they make sure that the chances of survival are higher. And even if it wouldn’t be under the plan, the statistics shows that alcoholics are significantly better represented in the waiting list comparing to people with obesity. In the end, the opposition didn’t give us any reference on how fat people or smokers get the liver disease. We assume that it is because there is no such mechanism. The opposition argues how hard is it to determine who is/was an alcoholic. Even though we have to repeat ourselves, there are various measures how to do it – social stability, employment records, psychological and physical tests which can clearly provide data about the history of the individual. (1) Are alcoholics responsible for their drinking problems? As the key group of this debate is alcoholics, once and for all we have to clarify how responsible they are. The burden of proof for the government was to provide evidence that alcoholism was because of individual’s lifestyle and even if there were any external factors they could have been overcome. First, as opposition didn’t refute our point in the argument of fairness, we can surely state that the significant amount of alcoholics started to use alcohol because of their free-will, and doesn’t matter whether they started doing it at age of 14 or 41, because the government did all the preventive functions: educating in schools, advertisement campaigns etc. Meanwhile we don’t deny that it is the government’s role to help them as much as possible to get rid of their addiction. And the government does it, take a look at Anonymous Alcoholics. Speaking about the external factors, as the opposition didn’t find it enough important to rebut, we believe that none of the surroundings could be a sufficient reason to be an excuse for being alcoholic, because it was both free choice and it is not enough justifiable as provided in the analogy of committing a crime because of a bad suburb. Similarly with genes, a person who is sick should seek for help from AA before the problem gets too serious. Anyway, as we provided in our reference, there is even no clear link proven between genetics and alcoholism. The opposition argued that people don’t think prior the problem occurs. We don’t think that it somehow could decrease the responsibility of alcoholics because similarly you don’t get a lower sentence just because you didn’t know that killing 10 people will end with the imprisonment. We believe that there is enough information provided about the bad consequences of alcohol. After all, on each bottle of alcohol there is written with bold letters: “The usage of alcohol damages your health”. Because of all these reasons, we believe alcoholism was a fault of these individuals and even if there was an influence from external reasons, it could have been prevented if a person wanted to. (2) Is it efficient to give livers to alcoholics? Even if we know that alcoholism was a fault of these individuals, would it impact the results of surgery and how likely a person would stop drinking after the surgery? Chances of survival. Both sides agreed that if a person was an alcoholic, it decreases the chance of successful surgery. In the doubtful statistics the opposition has found and to which it gave a failed hyperlink, there was written that alcoholics have 5% less chances of surviving. Even if it is only 5%, on the proposition side, we believe that it is enough to give livers to non-alcoholics. Even if the opposition argues that this percentage is not enough significant, we have to take into consideration how the liver is used afterwards. The data shows that 38% of alcoholics who had liver transplantation started using alcohol. Even if there were only 1 in 10 people starting to use alcohol again, it is clearly too many. We on the government side believe that each life is valuable, but if there is a better chance of allocating the resource, so that it could save 5% of patients more, we go for it. At least, while there 2,000 people dying each year while being on the waiting list. Assumption that those who will drink afterwards, most probably, will drink not as much to damage the liver again, we find silly. You don’t have to be a PhD in medicine to know that it will damage the liver anyway. Especially, if there is a high probability that the liver might not suit the person, alcohol will definitely increase the chance of failure. Also, we pointed out that drinking alcohol after the operation not only damages the liver, but has a harmful effect on the immune system of the body, which is crucial for a successful operation. On the point about the evaluation of patients. We don’t buy that 6 month period of sobriety anyhow could decrease the blame of destroying the liver. What we are arguing is not for how long a person was sober but what was the reason to get the liver failure. To sum up, we believe that it is by no means more efficient to give a liver to a person who has a higher possibility of survival, and even if under this plan we undermine any rights of alcoholics, it is very important to use the scarce resource in the best way possible taking into account even 5% difference. (3) Is it justifiable for the government to prevent alcoholics from entering the line? If we have clarified how alcoholics are responsible for their actions and how inefficient it would be to give transplants to them, is it still justifiable for the government to choose what’s the best for the whole society if clearly one group gets worse off? We are very glad that the opposition brought up the point of who should be given a liver – is a 2nd chance for alcoholic better than a 1st chance for a person with an inherit decease? We do agree that lives should be treated equally if everybody had the same opportunity initially. But we believe it is fairer to give a chance for a person that didn’t have any opportunity before and didn’t damage his own health on purpose. Thus, it is fair to give livers to non-alcoholics. The opposition believes it is unethical that somebody has to prove they deserve a transplant. On the government’s side we believe that it is ethical to save as many lives as possible and if the resource is scarce, we save those who have a higher possibility of survival. We don’t think that patients have to prove anything and nowhere in our plan or arguments we stated it. But we believe that each and every person has to be suitable for the surgery. However, we see that already under the Status Quo in California, which was given as a counter-plan from the opposition, doctors evaluate candidates in some cases based on their socio-economic group. We believe that if it is allowed, there is nothing wrong to evaluate based on the past decisions made. Besides these three clash points we believe this plan introduces several benefits that were never really tackled. The plan will send a clear message that alcoholism is inherently bad and will increase the costs of using it, which is desirable for any government. First it shows that the government doesn’t like alcoholics. Secondly, it once again reminds alcoholics about problems they could possibly have in the future. Thirdly, it deals with the issues of moral hazard alcoholics could have under the status quo. Also, we believe that organ donations will increase. Even if the majority of people give their livers because of other reasons, one saved life is better than nothing. Such plan could increase the number of livers donated, because a person donating his liver will be sure that it is going to be received by an unlucky patient really in need, not an alcoholic that had been drinking for decades ruining his own organism. In any case, there is no reason that this plan will decrease the number of donors, so in that sense it could only bring benefits. And the last, but not the least: doctors. As provided in the evidence in the USA and the UK doctors already have to decide which surgery would be too expensive or too unlikely to succeed. Our plan would only decrease the hard times for doctors as it would ease their decision upon preventing alcoholics from having a surgery. Overall, we think that denying livers to alcoholics and giving them to those with bad luck is both efficient and fair. Even if it is only by 5% more efficient, we go for it. No doubts it is fair, since alcoholics are responsible themselves for their harmed livers. Moreover, this plan also brings some additional good effects. For both these reasons we beg you to propose the motion.