Re: Organ donation
- From: Peter Brooks <Peter.H.M.Brooks@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2007 09:26:09 -0000
On Jul 22, 10:39 am, Dave Smith <da...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 20 Jul, 11:04, Peter Brooks <Peter.H.M.Bro...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:I don't have a particular problem with that - not really. It would
On Jul 20, 10:43 am, Dave Smith <da...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 20 Jul, 07:04, Peter Brooks <Peter.H.M.Bro...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Jul 19, 11:53 pm, Dave Smith <da...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 19 Jul, 11:33, Peter Brooks <Peter.H.M.Bro...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Jul 18, 1:10 pm, Dave Smith <da...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:> Is it ethical to take people's organs for transplantation when they
die, if they haven't given explicit permission?
Of course it's ethical. It'd be wrong to let them spoil if somebody
else needs them. It'd be ethical to have somebody's kidneys for
breakfast if they were dead already and you were peckish, let along
have them to save somebody's life.
A corpse is a res nullius, or, perhaps more aptly, a res derelicta, so
the previous owner, being dead, has no call on it whatsoever. Anybody
else can do with it as they please - apart from things that would harm
others, like leaving it in a watercourse (something I was pleased to
discover had just been made illegal in India before my first visit).
Of course, the corpses of those who have just died are normally
treated with respect. Don't you think this is reasonable, if only
because of concern for the feelings of those still living? Do you
think people's wills should be disregarded once they have died?
I agree that it is reasonable for the reason you give - there's no
reason why removing organs should be disrepectful to the feelings of
the living. I must say that I was a little surprised that they did a
full PM on my aunt when she died, because I knew how seldom they are
done these days because of the cut-backs on pathologists. It was, of
course, a perfectly reasonable thing to do, but much more
'invasive' (if a corpse can, in fact, be 'invaded') than simple organ
removal. It was fascinating, though, to see five separate causes of
death listed - I think 'old age' or 'too much fondness for cream'
would have done, but, of course they had to make the most of the PM
and five statistics from one must have been a satisfying score.
Corpses have to be disposed of for hygiene reasons, as we all know,
being reduced to ash in a gas oven or eaten by maggots and beetles are
not particularly dignified, if you think of corpses as some sort of
people who could have dignity. Using the organs to help others is
considerably less grisly.- Hide quoted text -
But I think you are ducking my point about wills. If we have regard
for how people want their property to be disposed of after their
death, why not have regard for how they want their corpses disposed
of?
Sorry, I didn't mean to duck it. I realised, in the shower, that I
hadn't addressed it.
Yes, the will of the dead can be ignored. My brother made requests to
my sister, my parents, friends of his and me that we consume his liver
(he gave a receipt, I think it was to be cooked with beans) at his
wake. We discussed this and decided not to.
Property distribution after death is clearly an important matter for
the living. Probate is a complicated area and the matter of fairness
to survivors is covered reasonably well by the law of intestate
succession - though the state does rather too well out of it.
The notion of giving something to somebody after you have no further
use for it is a reasonable one, though, so is fulfilling a contractual
obligation after death, if possible. So the debts of the deceased are
paid out of the estate, even though the deceased isn't there to agree
- he might have disputed some of them, but this is ignored.
So, as a promise by a living person, a will has some force. The
Victorian propensity for mischievous wills (they did have a sense of
humour) led to the legal force of wills being much reduced - so, for
example, you could no longer leave your debts to anybody (a pity, I
think, though I suppose that I might have been a receiver of some).
It is also possible, and reasonable, to dispute wills that unfairly
dispose of an estate to strangers rather than to family. The notion
is, i think, that there is an element of distributed ownership, so the
immediate family has a claim to the property of the deceased - which
seems reasonable to me.
I don't see any of this as being a matter of kow-towing to the will of
dead people.
So, I don't see why we should have an overriding obligation as to
disposing of property nor of how we deal with the res nullius of their
corpse.
What if a person has explicitly stated that he doesn't want his organs
to be transplanted after his death? Should this wish be respected?
depend, though. If there was somebody needing, say, a heart and his
was the only one, then I'd think 'bugger the wishes of the selfish
sod'. If the place was awash with hearts, though, then it wouldn't
matter much and one might as well allow it so that you don't have
nutters burying their relatives secretly in the garden to avoid any
chance of an organ being excised.
.
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- Re: Organ donation
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