Mood:
irritatedTopic: Scientific Progress...
Can you really argue with this policy?
Bloody, f***king yes!
Alright, look: people need organs all the time, and being an organ donor is terrific and if your religious beliefs don't interfere then I most certainly reccommend it (it'll knock a few years off purgatory, if nothing else...)
Seriously: donation is beautiful.
But you cannot have a policy of ASSUMING that a decedent wants to have their corpse butchered as such. I've got lots of problems with the whole organ-donation network as it is (including many on the list of recipients...) although in the final analysis I'm fine with venting my spleen (and everything else) for the Greater Good.
But, I don't have the 'donation option' down on my license either. My wishes are known by all my immediate family and friends, but it's not official, as such (something about being wheeled into an OR after a bad accident and having some pencil pusher eyeing that symbol on my card with frothing lips really puts me off...)
Part of this debate also touches upon the old European secularist ideal of the New World Man (and his body) being a cog in the gears instead of an individual unto themselves.
Tell me this: after a bad traffic accident, does the paramedic have the right to assume that a mangled corpse's watch is up for grabs? After a plane crash, does the airline assume that the passengers' luggage that went on ahead of them is ripe for their coffers?
Well: what if they sent the watch and luggage off to charity? Is that any different?
These might be poor examples, but there's something else very troubling to consider...
Take your average government-based, rationed health care system... The UK ain't exactly happy to provide all its citizens with the care they often need because, quite simply, this would bankrupt the already expensive government-managed healthcare coffers.
Now imagine doctors debating expensive procedures for otherwise healthy elderly patients and other 'dregs' on their system, while at the same time knowing that, unless these people have OFFICIAL WRITTEN DENIAL (with a government-supplied form that takes eight to ten weeks to process, no doubt...) then their current survival is denying someone else the use of their bodies... how selfish of them!
...what to do, huh?... what to do?...
If the EU doesn't already have an opt-out system (and I'd assume, actually, that organ 'donation' is likely mandatory in that Brave New World...) then at least Mr Lazarescu would've been allowed to hang around an OR instead of being shuttled around from hospital to hospital in his movie (he could make small talk with the surgeon standing beside him, sharpening his knives in anticipation...)
I'm kinda nasty today, aren't I? Whatever my ideology, I'll close by appealing to everyone out there to be a donor ('cause someday your heart might give someone a new start...)
But that's YOUR CHOICE, and no government or third party has the right to assume that you've no problem with being flayed apart like a side of beef. Donors are true heroes, worthy of praise and thanks, but unwitting providers are discardable cogs, used as little more than a mere means to an end.
As for Scientific Progress? It goes dumpster-diving for discarded pig entrails (they're almost as good, right...? ;)
