From: eeb1@kimbark.uchicago.edu (e elizabeth bartley)
Subject: Re: interesting [and scary] blurb...
Reply-To: eeb1@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 1992 18:33:45 GMT

In article <1hu5h0INNk8h@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu>
bu008@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Brandon D. Ray) writes:
>In a previous article, eeb1@quads.uchicago.edu (e elizabeth bartley) says:
>>In article <1992Dec23.203126.21825@newstand.syr.edu>
>>greeny@top.cis.syr.edu (J. S. Greenfield) writes:

>>>In any case, this proposal doesn't really remove anyone's rights.  It just
>>>changes the default when one doesn't specify how they want things to be
>>>done after they are dead.

>>Can't you see the vested interest here in not finding out that the
>>person didn't want his organs used?  Can't you see the vested interest
>>here in making it difficult to properly say that I want my corpse in
>>one piece?

>Yes.  But you have no reason to suppose that it would be difficult.

At first, I don't think it will.

But the proposal to *assume* that one's organs are up for grabs unless
he's said otherwise sounds to me as if it's making organ donation an
obligation.  Once they've made it an obligation, it's possible to make
it slowly more difficult not to fulfill that obligation.

>>>This strikes me as similar to changing the law regarding inheritance when
>>>someone dies intestate.

>>Yes -- similar to changing the law to say that when someone dies
>>intestate the state gets everything.

>>Gee, Harry remarried and didn't realize that made his old will
>>obsolete -- his wife and kids get nothing.  Gee, the state government
>>has decided that the will's invalid and they get everything.

>Apples and oranges.  The human body after death has no intrinsic value.

Come again?  Or didn't you know they sell kidneys in some parts of the
globe?  A corpse most definitely has an intrinsic value; in the U.S.
we're just prohibited from selling it.

I think what you mean is the corpse has no value to my heirs, since
they can't legally sell it.  I consider your opinion irrelevant; it's
*theirs*, not *yours*.  If I had an incurably and rather morbidly
sentimental husband who wanted it embalmed and put in a clear plastic
coffin, my corpse would be worth something to him.

>>>Considering that there is a rational purpose, and this *doesn't* revoke
>>>anybody's rights, I'm inclined to believe that the proposal is reasonable.

>>I think I have a right to not have to run around state offices getting
>>little pieces of paper in order to have what my religion demands be
>>done to my body after my death.

>Why do you suppose it would be so complicated?  

I think it will become complicated if this proposal passes because all
of the bureaucratic incentives are to produce more organs for
harvesting -- not to do with people's corpses what they wanted and
their heirs want.

>>>So tell me why I should think otherwise.

>>Read Larry Niven.  He illustrates this slippery slope marvelously.  I
>>especially recommend "The Jigsaw Man", a brief short story of his.

>I've read the Jigsaw Man.  Scary.  But again, you are comparing apples
>and oranges.  Larry Niven was describing a society where people were 
>deliberately killed in order to obtain their organs...through the
>means of prescribing the death penalty even for minor offenses.  Niven is
>a good writer, and the story was effective, but I've always felt that
>the premise was very far-fetched.

Don't you see how the perception of organ donation becoming an
obligation rather than a gift feeds in to that?

>It is also fiction.  We are talking about real life.

Certainly it's fiction -- a useful illustration of a deadly
possibility.

In real life, I am currently NOT government property, not even after
I've died.  I would like that to continue.  My body is *not* the
property of the government unless I voluntarily give it to them, and I
should *not* be obligated to do anything to stop them from taking it.

-- 
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
Newsgroups: alt.society.civil-liberty,talk.politics.guns