Agreed, if you'd find a way to have most people make up their mind that might be enough. Combining it with a drivers license would make sure that 90-something percent of the people would at least think about it once.
And as for driving habits and risks.... You could do a lot worse than live in the US, trust me.
Why do you want to maximise the number of expensive operations to keep people alive who are "for parts or not working"?
Basic decency?
It's not like we have a shortage of people. If you want more humans, just provide open access to your womenfolk.
There's certainly enough people already, and I'm not the Pope - birth control is just fine with me.
if that makes you feel uncomfortable, good - you want to make me & mine community property as soon as we pop our clogs?
You have a funny way of arguing - first lashing out instead of just coming up with the point you want to make. No, I don't want to take your choice about what to do with your corpse after you died away from you. Just read my comment again and you'll see.
The problem with the resulting situation is that lots of people end up not being able to get kidneys, because they can't find somebody else willing to get them into the system by donating an organ. Organ donors are rare in general.
Why would I give a kidney (requiring life threatening surgery) to some total stranger with absolutely no benefit to myself?
Suppose that stranger could offer you $200k for that kidney? Maybe you'd think about it more then.
I'm afraid I would have to, if I were in serious financial problems. And I'd hate having to face that choice.
On the other hand, that stranger could also have them for free - if he would just wait for me to die first.
Live organ donors are rare indeed. But we could do much better with the other type and face less ethical challenges.
Better question: what are your wife and kids going to do with the money when you're dead?
Agreed, after there's 'me' left that question makes more sense.
Seriously, I've been telling my wife for years to donate my leftovers to the local medical school. Unfortunately, my cancer history means my leftovers are basically useless for transplanting. But, given that I were reasonably healthy, I'd feel quite comfortable with her getting the proceeds from whatever leftovers still were useful after I got done using them....
I understand that, and I would feel the same. But would you consider helping your family financially more important than helping an unknown person fighting for his life? To personally, the second thing would be more important, unless my family would be in a really desperate financial situation.
In the one case it is about helping strangers (the likely recipients of your organs), and in the other case it is about helping your family (the likely recipients of the money raised from selling your organs).
People will do a lot more for their family than strangers.
Absolutely true, and I understand the way this worked in this case. I was just thinking out loud about solving the problem of donor organ shortage in general. I'm not expecting most people to volunteer being an organ donor while alive - it's simply asking a bit much. But many people could be convinced to potentially become an organ donor after death simply for altruistic reasons. Neither organs nor money aren't going to be of any use to you. Why not help someone else, even if it's a person you don't know?
Exactly my thoughts, except that people who really have problems with this solution for religious or whatever reason should have a way to opt-out. Simply changing the default from opt-out to opt-in would already make a big difference, maybe enough, maybe not.
If that wouldn't be enough, the deal could be that people who choose to opt-out would be placed behind people who choose opt-in in on the waiting list in case they need an organ themselves. That would be fair and still leave people the choice to opt-out if they are really uncomfortable with the whole organ donation idea (personally, I'm not - dead is dead).
This is zero-sum thinking. Most life saving organ transplants go to the grave right now. If there was a financial incentive to donate....
It's indeed a shame a lot of potential organ transplants go to the grave right now. Reasoning about this primarily in financial terms first makes no sense, though. After all, what am I going to do with the money when I'm dead? Bury it with me? OK, it could give me a good feeling if I knew it would help my relatives. But then it's about helping others, not about money, and this should be the starting point of reasoning about this issue.
You really don't need the invisible hand of the market to fix everything. A much more sensible solution, for example, would be to find ways more people would agree to be organ donors after death.
For example, switching the default from opt-in to opt-out would make a significant difference in organ availability without actually forcing anyone to make a choice they're not comfortable with or could have an adverse influence on their health.
If the organs of most people dying would be available for transplantation, only a small fraction would be needed. A significant minority of people dies with perfectly fine kidneys.
I once heard about a traumatologist cynically referring to motor cyclists as 'future organ donors', for example.
According to Ethan Siegel, dark energy isn't written off, we just know a bit more about it.
I'm not in favour of making Greece an example; most Greece people didn't ask for the mess they are in and are hardly to blame for being ruled incompetently in the past. That said, it's complete nonsense to blame the unfortunate financial situation the country is in on Germany or the remainder of the EU. Greece has been completely incompetent in raising taxes and clientelism and corruption are widespread. I can imagine the austerity measures to be impopular, but let's not forget that the EU has been dumping hundreds of billions of euro's in the EU, in an attempt to help Greece.
Plus some microbes of course, maybe throw in some tardigrades. It just might be enough to start life 2.0, which would be a nice backup and a great achievement.
Now that we're reasonably sure Mars is barren, I really don't get NASA's "let's not pollute it" attitude anymore.
It's bullshit the navy rescued anyone here. Transported, helped - many verbs would have fitted better.
Kidney stones supposedly hurt like hell (no personal experience here), but it's not something people generally die from.
Are iPads required in that school?
Yes, at least in practice, they are.
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." -- Albert Einstein
