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They aren't fallacious when there is a real likelihood that the first step will actually lead us down the subsequent steps. I think it is a stretch to say that assuming people have opted into organ donation will likely lead us to assuming that people have opted into sexual activity with us.
I agree that automatic opting into organ donation would lead to automatic opt into sexual activity is a stretch. Actually, it's more than a stretch, it's a non sequitur. However automatic opt in to organ donation leading to automatic opt-in of donating one's body to science? Not such a stretch. Automatic opt in to organ donation leading to automatic opt in to collecting evidence of genetic-based diseases or predisposition to genetic-based diseases that could then be used by insurance companies to determine if your surviving family members are "bad risks" - not such a long stretch.
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Originally Posted by Wittgenstein's Ghost
I agree that what happens during your life is a basic human right. But dead bodies aren't humans. They are morally inconsequential organic material. Saying that we have a right to determine what happens to our bodies once we no longer exist is very peculiar. Every other basic human right is a right to non-interference. Freedom of speech, religion, etc. are all rights to be free from outside intervention in certain ways. The supposed right to determine what happens to our bodies after we die is a claim that we have a right to determine how other people act even when we no longer exist.
The right to dictate what happens to ones' body is in one aspect closely linked to freedom of religious belief, as different religions have different requirements for the treatment of bodies. For instance, up until Vatican 2 in the early 60s, the Catholic church prohibited cremation, and the church still prohibits the scattering of ashes or otherwise keeping them any place other than consecrated ground (ie, no urns on the family mantle). Judaism has prohibitions against autopsies. The law also sees a right of control over what happens to one's remains, as case law time and time again has upheld the right of family, either a spouse or other next of kin, to determine what happens to a body, even to the extent of blocking the government from performing an autopsy in most cases. This is seated in the idea that the family are acting in the deceased's interests, just as next of kin are allowed to make medical decisions for an incapacitated family member. To reinforce the idea that family is acting in the deceased interests rather than any property interest of their own in the body, family wishes have been overriden when it was proven that the deceased had expressed final wishes that conflict with what his next of kin want to do with his remains.
The right to dictate what happens to ones' body is in one aspect closely linked to freedom of religious belief, as different religions have different requirements for the treatment of bodies. For instance, up until Vatican 2 in the early 60s, the Catholic church prohibited cremation, and the church still prohibits the scattering of ashes or otherwise keeping them any place other than consecrated ground (ie, no urns on the family mantle). Judaism has prohibitions against autopsies. The law also sees a right of control over what happens to one's remains, as case law time and time again has upheld the right of family, either a spouse or other next of kin, to determine what happens to a body, even to the extent of blocking the government from performing an autopsy in most cases. This is seated in the idea that the family are acting in the deceased's interests, just as next of kin are allowed to make medical decisions for an incapacitated family member. To reinforce the idea that family is acting in the deceased interests rather than any property interest of their own in the body, family wishes have been overriden when it was proven that the deceased had expressed final wishes that conflict with what his next of kin want to do with his remains.
I went round and round for 20-something pages on these arguments a couple weeks ago. The thread is still in the first couple pages here, and it is entitled "Organ Donation Should be Compulsory." I don't have much desire to do it again because I have responded to all of these same arguments over and over. In a nutshell, there are three relevant points:
1. There is a difference between having a legal right to something and having a basic human right to something. I am not making a legal claim. I am making a moral claim, which is a claim about basic human rights. Pointing to legal findings is irrelevant.
2. Would you agree that society has the right to bury or dispose of your body in some way after you die? If so, then you surely you recognize that such burial will certainly cause your organs to decay and your body to waste away. I fail to see the morally significant difference between that and removing your organs for a useful purpose.
3. Your dead body is not you. I fully believe you have rights. I do not believe a dead body has rights. Our rights stem from our capacity to have interests. There are ways your life can go well or go poorly because you can have positive and negative experiences. That is the foundation of all of your rights. If you can't have experiences and will never be able to have them, you have no rights. You can't experience pleasure or suffering, and you have no interests. Dead bodies can't have experiences, and they have no interests.
I agree that automatic opting into organ donation would lead to automatic opt into sexual activity is a stretch. Actually, it's more than a stretch, it's a non sequitur. However automatic opt in to organ donation leading to automatic opt-in of donating one's body to science? Not such a stretch. Automatic opt in to organ donation leading to automatic opt in to collecting evidence of genetic-based diseases or predisposition to genetic-based diseases that could then be used by insurance companies to determine if your surviving family members are "bad risks" - not such a long stretch.
I don't see how the dividing line between life and death doesn't seem like a binary, black-and-white line to you. We cannot harm a dead body. It is an impossible thing to do because dead bodies cannot experience harm. We can harm living people, and the insurance example you gave would clearly harm living people. So yes, that does seem like a massive stretch.
1) If you allow or force people on death row to donate their organs, you may create a perverse incentive for the State to increase the number of people on death row to increase the supply of organs. This could also potentially impact minorities unevenly - the increase in convictions could be higher among minority groups or the poor.
2) Even if you are able to put (1) aside and say "we'll just give people on death row the option to donate their organs", the problem is that these convicts are not in a position to make a free decision. The potential for coercion is obvious: the convict could be offered better treatment if he/she cooperates and worse treatment otherwise, and that prevents him/her from choosing freely.
I went round and round for 20-something pages on these arguments a couple weeks ago. The thread is still in the first couple pages here, and it is entitled "Organ Donation Should be Compulsory." I don't have much desire to do it again because I have responded to all of these same arguments over and over. In a nutshell, there are three relevant points:
1. There is a difference between having a legal right to something and having a basic human right to something. I am not making a legal claim. I am making a moral claim, which is a claim about basic human rights. Pointing to legal findings is irrelevant.
I'm confused, you state that you are not making a legal claim, but you say you laid out these arguments in a thread entitled "organ donation should be compulsory". Compulsory indicates enforcement, usually legal, to compel someone to do something. Like compulsory education.And in this thread, the OP did not indicate they were restricting the argument to moral justification. I think it is also "right" to consistently apply the principles underlying the rule of law as laid down in case law.
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Originally Posted by Wittgenstein's Ghost
2. Would you agree that society has the right to bury or dispose of your body in some way after you die? If so, then you surely you recognize that such burial will certainly cause your organs to decay and your body to waste away. I fail to see the morally significant difference between that and removing your organs for a useful purpose.
It is an established standard that individual rights can only be infringed when there is a compelling public interest to do so. Absolutely making sure bodies are properly interred so that disease is not spread is a compelling public interest, but that doesn't negate the obligation of the state to accomodate a person's beliefs to the fullest extent possible while doing so. And I would say there is a significant moral issue involved in causing people distress through knowing they live in a society where their deeply held spiritual beliefs about the importance of the integrity of the body to their immortal soul will not be respected. I get into this in more detail in the next paragraph.
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Originally Posted by Wittgenstein's Ghost
3. Your dead body is not you. I fully believe you have rights. I do not believe a dead body has rights. Our rights stem from our capacity to have interests. There are ways your life can go well or go poorly because you can have positive and negative experiences. That is the foundation of all of your rights. If you can't have experiences and will never be able to have them, you have no rights. You can't experience pleasure or suffering, and you have no interests. Dead bodies can't have experiences, and they have no interests.
I agree that my dead body is not me. I have no sentimentality about what happens to my body after I die. After any useable tissues are harvested, as for what happens to the rest of me - surprise me. However I still respect the fact that other people see things differently, often based on deep spiritual convictions. I believe that religion is all silly superstition, but I still believe in people's right to believe what they want. A person shouldn't be forced to do something that will cause them no material harm during their lifetime but which they believe imperils their immortal soul. Living in a country where they know things can be done to their body after death that would cause them such jeopardy is at the very least causing them harm through distress.
1) If you allow or force people on death row to donate their organs, you may create a perverse incentive for the State to increase the number of people on death row to increase the supply of organs. This could also potentially impact minorities unevenly - the increase in convictions could be higher among minority groups or the poor.
2) Even if you are able to put (1) aside and say "we'll just give people on death row the option to donate their organs", the problem is that these convicts are not in a position to make a free decision. The potential for coercion is obvious: the convict could be offered better treatment if he/she cooperates and worse treatment otherwise, and that prevents him/her from choosing freely.
1. I am fully opposed to the death penalty, and part of that is because it is already applied to impact minorities disproportionately, so on a certain level I find your argument appealing. However having served on a jury for a murder trial where several of my fellow jurors were irritated they could not impose the death penalty, so the prosecutor had to explicitly explain to us why she wasn't seeking it, what a high bar is actually required to seek it, even here in Texas, I don't see this being a real risk. Also even doubling the number of executions per year would not have a statistically significant impact on the number of organs available for transplant, so the incentive would be nil. People used to have somewhat similar concerns that if they put "organ donor" on their license, doctors might try a little less hard to save them, thinking they could be "used" for a transplant, but exhaustive studies have found no evidence of this actually occurring.
2. I definitely do agree that there is an unsettling possibility for coercion in giving them the option. I think it would be important to have stringent rules that it be made clear to convicts that their decision to donate would have no bearing on their case whatsoever. And prison officials must be held accountable to making sure standards of humane treatment are maintained in all situations.
I agree that automatic opting into organ donation would lead to automatic opt into sexual activity is a stretch. Actually, it's more than a stretch, it's a non sequitur.
Just for the record, I not arguing that one would necessarily lead to the other. I'm raising the question because if the concept is applied in one deeply personal context but is frowned upon in another deeply personal context there may be a flaw with the idea itself. Generally I am against any compulsory ideas relating to one's person, WG's argument about the dead no longer being persons notwithstanding.
Just for the record, I not arguing that one would necessarily lead to the other. I'm raising the question because if the concept is applied in one deeply personal context but is frowned upon in another deeply personal context there may be a flaw with the idea itself. Generally I am against any compulsory ideas relating to one's person, WG's argument about the dead no longer being persons notwithstanding.
It would violate the last of any sanctity we reserve for the dead. This idea approaches death with a looter's mentality - like when a player dies in a video game and his goods are dispersed, or eyeing the assets of someone to whom you are a beneficiary.
It's for the same reason the public gathered around the guillotine when it was still in use. Despite not all being victims of the crime, the general public likes to empathize because they identify with the victim. This leads to intrusive thoughts where they imagine themselves in a similar situation and wish harm on a person to whom they had no interaction, as if they did in fact suffer at the hands of the convict.
This is a very dangerous phenomenon when trying to assemble an impartial jury for a trial. Some people say things to get out of jury duty, and others will say what they know the judge is looking for from a "good candidate", not unlike filling out a personality assessment on a job application. Either way, these result in the placement of biased individuals to make a seemingly objective decision.
2) Lethal injection - the primary method in all 31 American states with capital punishment renders organs unusable for transplant. The backup/offender-option methods of electrocution and lethal gas do as well, though the rare instances of the firing squad (unused in over 8 years) and hanging (unused in over 22 years) would conceivably result in usable organs.
That's not necessarily the case for all organs or tissues. Lethal injection first uses a barbituate to render the person unconscious. Yes, the dose used itself is lethal, but barbituates' lethality comes from suppressing the autonomic nervous system to the point that they stop breathing. That in itself does not damage organs, and the amount of barbituate in any specific organ would not necessarily be high enough to cause problems to a transplantee. Next a muscle relaxant is administered that paralyzes skeletal muscle - including the diaphragm, also stopping breathing. Again, the amount of relaxant in any one organ would not necessarily render it unusable. Finally, potassium chloride is administered, which interfers with the electrical activity in the heart, causing arrythmia and death.
So yeah, you wouldn't want an executed prisoner's heart. Probably not liver or kidneys, either. But corneas, cadaver skin for burn victims? Absolutely fine.
"In 2000, only 149 organs from donors who suffered a fatal drug overdose were transplanted into patients waiting for a replacement kidney, heart, liver or lungs. In 2016, overdose victims donated 3,533 such organs for transplant."
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Originally Posted by Hulsker 1856
3) The lifestyles of those on death row - rampant substance abuse, rampant Hep C infection rates, and so forth - don't make for a promising donor pool.
You are very correct here, this is a very real issue. The transplant community has discouraged the use of prisoners' organs since the 90s precisely because of this.
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Originally Posted by Hulsker 1856
4) The purpose of the criminal justice system is deterrence, prevention, rehabilitation. It's not as an organ farm.
I completely agree.
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Originally Posted by Hulsker 1856
5) There are abundant organs. The shortage results from most people not choosing to donate, or having their wishes overridden by surviving family. The solution is to make organ donation implied and the default, with an opt-out if people want to do so.
Even if a person didn't check the organ donor box, even if the family didn't proactively say "we want to donate his organs" - generally when there is a newly or soon-to-be deceased person in the hospital with viable organs, the doctor or someone else from the hospital will approach the family about donating organs. I think this method is generally just as effective as your suggestion of organ donation the default, without the potential concerns.
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