From: eeb1@quads.uchicago.edu (e elizabeth bartley)
Subject: Re: interesting [and scary] blurb...
Reply-To: eeb1@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago
Distribution: usa
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 1992 23:47:57 GMT

In article <1992Dec30.184941.6791@mksol.dseg.ti.com>
noonan@mksol.dseg.ti.com (Michael P Noonan) writes:

>How can anyone sit here and say, "I don't want so-and-so to have my
>organs because I don't agree with his political views."

Hm.  Let's see....

I don't want my organs used to save a mass murderer; I want the mass
murderer *dead* and no future threat to anyone.

Similarly, I don't want my organs used to save someone who believes
that [Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, gays, Jews, whites, and/or Indians,
etc., etc.] should be killed.  Or even someone that thinks there's
nothing wrong with killing them -- in both cases, I think his life is
worth less than the risk he poses to the rest of the world.

Sounds to me as if I don't want some people to have my organs if they
hold a particular political view I disagree with.  Can you understand
why?

>I am personally
>disgusted that someone could have the potential to be so selfish to not
>share something of which they have no need.

Are you a blood donar?  I am.

Have you had your bone marrow checked so that you'll be told if you
could save someone's life with it?  I haven't; too much trouble to
find out how to do it and I've heard horror stories which I don't know
whether or not are true about what the donation is like.

Have you donated your spare kidney?  You only need one, after all.  I
haven't and won't.

DO YOU BEGIN TO SEE HOW DANGEROUS LETTING PEOPLE DEMAND SOMETHING OF
YOU BECAUSE THEY NEED IT AND THINK YOU DON'T IS?

Excuse me for shouting.

>Everyone should be a donor.

It would be nice if everyone were.  I am.  Saying that everyone has
the moral obligation to be one is another matter.

>It shouldn't even be a question.

Excuse me while I pick up my jaw.

Very well.  Let me *try* and explain.

Hypothesize a person whose religious beliefs hold that at some point
in the future his dead body will be resurrected and he will live
forevermore in that resurrected body.  He's worried about what having
a whole organ inside of another person (who may also be resurrected)
will do it his resurrection.  And he thinks that an eternal life is
worth infinitely more than a finite life.  I think there would be no
question that he would *not* become an organ donor, and with his
worldview, SHOULD not become an organ donor.

Now hypothesize someone who's squicked at having his dead body cut
into pieces.  I suppose he *should* become an organ donor.  But you
have no right to tell him he must.  It is his body, after all, and his
to dispose of as he pleases.

>Why should your dead body have rights over it's organs?

It doesn't.  A person while alive has the right to dispose of his
organs when dead, just like any other piece of property he owned while
alive.  The state has no more right to those organs than it does to
your car.  Letting the state government take something because *it*
thinks you have no use for something and others do is one step away
from letting the state governemnt take something because *it* thinks
you have less use for something than others do.  Hello, 100% taxation.

-- 
E. Elizabeth Bartley           |        "This is a world of compensation; and
he who would be no slave must consent to have no slave.  Those who deny freedom
to others deserve it not for themselves, and, under a just God, cannot long
retain it."    - Abraham Lincoln