From: PA146008@utkvm1.utk.edu (David Veal)
Subject: Re: interesting [and scary] blurb...
Organization: University of Tennessee Division of Continuing Education
Date: Mon, 28 Dec 1992 16:49:27 GMT

In article <1hlvrpINNq6c@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu> bu008@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Brandon D. Ray) writes:

>In a previous article, PA146008@utkvm1.utk.edu (David Veal) says:
>
>>> Any attempt to mandate organ donorship
>>>>is easily an infringement upon my right to privacy, and I doubt any court
>>>>would upload such a law.  Actually, stating what States may not have my
>>>>organs and then having the federal government over-rule me may be an
>>>>infringement of my rights already, but I'll let the legal scholars ponder
>>>>that a bit.  All I want to do is put on the leathers and helmet and ride
>>>>this spring without Big Brother telling me I *have* to.
>>
>>>And, as I also previously pointed out, corpses do not have civil rights.
>>
>>       That's cute.  I think I'll file that in the same folder as the
>>phrase "Metabolically challenged."  *I* have rights, and disposal of
>>*my* body would seem to be one of them.
>>
>Sorry; you are mistaken.  Your corpse is technically the property of your
>estate, which means that in your last will and testament you have a certain
>amount of freedom over its disposition.  However, your options are severely
>circumscribed.  If your wishes were violated, the cause of action would lie
>with your heirs, not with you.

       I thought that's what I said.

       However, it would seem to me that upon my death, my body would no more
revert to the state, to this communitarian group, or to a hospital than
would any lamp, chair, or other piece of property that was mine in life.

>>>However, this is also a bit off the point.  The original post said that
>>>the proposed change was that the *default* situation was that organ
>>>donation was permitted.  You could still carrY a card  explicitly
>>>withholding consent.
>>
>>        So it becomes "We will harvest your organs if you do not search
>>high and low for the office where you can get a card from us that says
>>we won't be able to take your organs to help all these innocent people,
>>you evil greedy person, you."
>>        Or do you think once they've got the rights to your organs they'll
>>put too much effort into helping you take them back?

>You make the process sound pretty ugly, 

        It is a pretty ugly thing to place the burdon of telling others that
your body does not belong to them on somebody.  And it has the possibility
of becoming even uglier.

>but why do you assume that it would be
>any more difficult to get an organ-non-donor card than it is to obtain a
>durable power of attorney or an advanced medical directive?

        In the first place, getting a durable power of attorney or an
advanced medical directive is a pain, and most difficult when somebody 
doesn't know how.  In the second, the people all of a sudden in charge of 
these non-donor cards would all of a sudden have an incentive to *make*
it difficult, because the easier it is, the less organs there would be to 
donate.
        Or do you *really* think all it would take is writing "I'm not an 
organ donor" on a piece of paper and carrying it around with you?  Given the 
legislative impulse of our government, *I'm* not all that confident that any 
group who wants to lay claim to *my* body parts will stop with round one.

>>>I think that is a reasonable compromise, given that
>>>the vast majority of people state in surveys that they would have donated
>>>Uncle Ralph's kidneys, if only someone had asked them.
>>
>>        (In order to make *some* referance to tpg) This sounds like a lot
>>of the gun control *compromises*, where what you're really getting is
>>the other side is deciding to "compromise" by not demanding as much from
>>you as they did previously.
>>        "We can't force you to donate, so we'll make it your responsibility
>>to tell us we can't."
>>        It would seem to *me* that if people not asking is the problem,
>>we should make an effort to ask, rather than pretending people belong to
>>the government unless they object.

>Well, this has been done.  Most if not all states have "required request"
>legislation, which means that whenever a patient dies in a hospital the
>hospital is required to request organ donation.  Unfortunately, most hospitals
>have neither the time nor the properly trained staff to do this...

       Typical government response.  Require something and then put the
burden of paying for it onto somebody else.  You know, doing something
doesn't *have* to require either legislation *or* forced adherence thereof.

>it usually
>winds up being one of several things the doctor or a nurse covers as they go
>hurriedly down a checklist of Things to Do When Someone Dies.  The situation
>is not very satisfactory for patients, their families or the medical staff,
>nor is this time a good time for delicate questions and discussions.

        Oh, I see.  The hospitals get to lay claim to my organs becuase it's
too much trouble, and too sensitive a subject, to *ask* my family.  I
gush sympathy.
        And I'm curious why they didn't just require this question at 
another, less sensitive time.  Perhaps because it might have worked, and
not given a good excuse to lay claim to my organs?

>Yes, we won't force you to donate, but I feel it is not unreasonable to ask 
>you to make an absolutely minimal effort to notify us that you do not wish 
>to donate...

         There are a lot of things one group of people doesn't think it is 
unreasonable to ask another group of people.  The Christian Fundamentalisits
don't think it's unreasonable to ask everyone to live according to their 
narrow view of the world.  The socialists don't think it's unreasonable to 
ask everyone to live in *their* narrow view of the world. 
         But so what?  You "minimal" effort still requires me to go out of 
the way to prevent others from taking what is mine, or what is my heir's.  
It would be entertaining to require that people get a card for every piece 
of property they own to prevent it "reverting" to government control once 
they died.  Why then are our bodies, arguably the one things above all 
others that is ours, is so different?

>given the fact that the vast majority of your fellow citizens
>indicate that they *do* wish to donate.  

         Awww, they wish to donate, but just don't understand how.  They 
wish to donate but just haven't been asked.  They wish to donate but it's
just to much trouble.  My heart bleeds for the poor, lazy people who would
donate if only someone came to their door with a donor card on a silver 
platter.
         Explain to me how their laziness makes it right to harvest my 
organs unless I jump through the proper legal rings to stop them?  (And
I will.  By god, I will.  I'm happy to donate when it's my choice.)

>But I would never dream of requiring
>anyone to donate who did not wish to do so.

         Consider this.  If people are willing to donate, but just don't 
becuase "nobody has asked," or "it's too difficult" how is it, then, 
different for those who *don't* want to donate, but now for them nobody
is asking them if they don't want to donate, or that it's too difficult?
         Why is it ok, then, to change the rules to hurt them?

>The discussion is not at all parallel to the gun control arguments since, as
>previously noted, dead people do not have civil rights.  

         Neither do guns.  Perhaps they will just "arrest" my body for
"pollution violations."  My body, like my other posessions, should become 
the property of my heirs, who, in the absence of any orders on my part, may 
decide the disposition of, just the same as if I left them a gun.  Because 
my body *is* a body does not grant the government greater claim.  Something, 
just because it has no civil rights, does not automatically become the 
property of the government.

>And you can sneer at
>that all you want but 1.) it is true and 2.) I have yet to hear from you (or
>anyone) a valid reason why a dead person's "rights" should override those of
>a living person.

         Whether or not the dead body has civil rights is completely and 
totally irrelevent.  The absence or existance of rights changes not one iota 
whether the government can lay claim to the physical posession of 
something.  My car has no civil rights, but that doesn't mean I have to get 
an attorney and sign special papers to prevent the government from randomly 
coming to take posession of it at some arbitrary point.  If a body has no 
civil rights, and it is just another piece of meat, then it becomes the 
posession of a person's heirs, no more the property of the government than 
anything else.
         And whatever "rights" a living person may have, they do not 
include entitlement to any other person's organs, any more than they may 
demand any other piece of property.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
David Veal               University of Tennessee Div. of Cont. Education
                         Information Services Group
PA146008@utkvm1.utk.edu  (Mail to VEAL@utkvm1.utk.edu will bounce.)
Newsgroups: alt.society.civil-liberty,misc.talk.politics