Should people who refuse to be organ donors be able to receive organs?

Good question. I think…..No. But that also seems a little harsh, probably. Anyway you approach it, a person like this is essentially saying “You can’t have mine, but I should still be able to take theirs.”

Yes.

Excellent question!

I’d generally say yes but if people want an option then I don’t see some can’t further specify their wishes only other organ donors receive.

Yes, there are a bunch of reasons why someone may refuse.

What reasons @marinelife?

I say, No. If they refuse to donate then they should actually refuse to be a recipient themselves for the same reason.

@Dutchess_III Their organs might not be eligible for donation. It could be against their religious beliefs. They could have a personal fear of it. I just don’t believe that should be a test for an potential organ recipient.

@marinelife, I specified “refuse” to be donors, so that people who are simply ineligible don’t count.

Hmmmm…. I think that it’s a similar situation to whether or not the death penalty is acceptable or not. As in, who am I to stop someone from living just because they’ve put themselves in the position of making that decision for someone else?

@marinelife There is no way a person could know which of their organs could be “ineligible” until after they’ve died, and then the doctors would be the ones to make that call.

If they refuse to donate for religious, thus quite possibly denying someone else life down the road, but are willing to accept a donor organ to save their own lives, then they are hypocrites.

If they have a personal fear of donating one, they should have a personal fear of receiving one.

This is my opinion.

@nikipedia How would people know if someone refused to be an organ donor, as opposed to them being ineligible? For the most part, organ donors just check the box on their state ID. And those who don’t don’t go on to specify “Because, religious reasons” or “because I was told I had some disease that I’m under the impression makes me ineligible”. All the doctors know is that they didn’t sign up to be a donor when they were alive, and that now that the non-donor is dead, they can’t ask them why.

How could anyone be ineligible to donate organs? I mean, they may have organs that aren’t going to be worth a crap when they die, but that doesn’t mean ALL of their organs are bad!

And, it could be that they were gay, or felt the US’s policies were homophobic.

@Dutchess_III HIV positive, blood infections, have a cancer…

But wouldn’t their medical histories be checked before they were actually approved to donate? I mean, what if someone never even knew they were HIV positive and agreed to donate organs.

@marinelife You can’t really use religious reasons as an example though, because if it’s against their religion to donate, it’s most likely against their religion to receive.

This is a hard question to answer one way or the other. I’m inclined to say no, because it’s the ultimate hypocrisy and selfishness, BUT there are often extenuating circumstances, like @Aethelflaed listed. They would most likely already know they have AIDS or cancer, and would check “NO” on their driver’s license. Technically, it’s a “refusal” to donate, but it’s a refusal for health reasons.

Well, ok, to clarify, I intended the question to be about people are not willing to donate organs rather than people who are not able.

Yes, it comes down to society looking out for the individual as a mandatory function. However it should remain the individuals choice whether or not to look out for society.

Got it, Nick!
So my answer stands.

I would not begrudge anyone a lifesaving procedure of any kind. Whatever that person’s reason for not wanting to donate, that’s not for me to judge.

They’re all welcome to mine, whether they’d be willing to donate theirs or not. I’m certainly not going to make judgments like that based on someone elses willingness to donate or not.

yes. being a recipient may change their minds.

@nikipedia Yeah, I get the distinction, I just think that since there’s really no way to tell which category a person falls into, there’s no way to implement any kind of plan to do anything about it. So, yeah, they should be able to receive organ donations.

The category is they CAN but they REFUSE.

@Aethelflaed, I don’t think it would be that hard to have a special category for “medically unable to donate, willing to receive” on their driver’s license. Instead of the pink dot you get a blue dot. Or something.

@nikipedia No…your driver’s license is public property in too many ways. I wouldn’t care for the DMV folks, or the cop who pulls me over, or the check out gal who’s checking my ID to know I was medically ineligible for anything!

@nikipedia But wouldn’t everyone who doesn’t want to donate simply say they’re medically unable to donate? It’s not like the DMV could really require you to show medical records for that (privacy issues). And, there’s probably going to be at least a couple people who were wrongly told they had some medical issue (maybe a tech mixed up the samples or something – it happens), but then if you went to test them when they were dead, they’d be totally fine (and at that point, it’s also totally irrelevant – if they’re dead, they won’t be receiving any donations). And it is a huge privacy issue. And, you could have people who would check the box for, like, the one year they need a donation, but not the years before or the years after. It’s just way, way to complicated.

@anartist ” being a recipient may change their minds” exactly

@Aethelflaed, the practical issues are not insurmountable nor is it necessary to resolve them in order to make a moral decision about this case. Each state maintains a donor registry. It does not seem difficult to me to require people to provide medical evidence that they are not able to donate in order for them to be placed on the “cannot give, willing to receive” list. This does not seem complicated to me.

OK, some of you say that persons unwilling to donate should not be able to receive, but you’ll be dead when the harvesting happens. Why would you care at that point?

@nikipedia No specific information would need to go beyond your DR, however anyone seeing you are listed as negative for giving/positive for receiving will learn more than some people might be willing to have generally known.

The question at that point is can society justify the invasion of privacy well enough to condone impinging upon the individuals choice in that instance. That can make it significantly more complex.

My stance is this: Everyone in a life threatening condition receives an organ, be they donor themselves or not and in the mean time ‘we’ put a lot of effort to awareness of the necessity of being donors.
It works to an extent…, in the Netherlands, through campaigns and (controversial) tv shows the number of people registering to be donor has increased although I can’t find figures to support this, so I cannot be sure for 100%.

Yes. Just like everyone that thinks ‘Obamacare’ is the devil should still receive medical care. Two wrongs don’t make a right.

I think they should be allowed to receive an organ.
I agree that they may decide to be a donor themselves after being a recipient.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir Meh, good point.

As I understand it, there is a deficit of organ donors, which means some people die because they can’t find a donor. So, unless there are spare organs, I say those who refuse to be donors can go fuck themselves.

This is actually a really good question. But, how would one know? Are there records kept somewhere that are legal requests either for giving or receiving an organ.

This question actually involves more investigation into its legalites.

@john65pennington : It was pretty well explained above that the Q is meant as a hypothetical moral exercise.

I’m an organ donor. I wouldn’t want a stipulation put on my donation that it had to be to another donor. It is personal choice. I’m also a blood donor and on the registry for the National Marrow Donor Program. Do you think only people who donate blood should receive blood? Or that only others on the marrow registery should receive life saving marrow? I don’t. I think it is a personal choice to give or not to give.

I never thought about before. I say no. If they aren’t willing to donate an organ they should not receive one. Seems pretty cut and dry to me.

Yes, I still think they should be eligible for the organ donation. I can understand the argument against it though, but the whole point of donation is helping others out. Perhaps helping someone who was against organ donation, but then found themselves in the situation of needing an organ would change their outlook on things.

I also think it’s a bad idea to start rating people’s worthiness for receiving organs on their willingness to donate organs themselves. I mean, would we have a different level for people who regularly donate blood? What about living donors? How much does one have to give of their body (living or dead) to deserve to receive from someone else?

@bkcunningham Good point. I want to be a blood donor and have tried so many times, but I’m anemic and have finally given up. I don’t want to be excluded because I can’t give blood from receiving it. Actually, during a surgery a few years ago, I lost a tremendous amount of blood and needed a transfusion. It saved my life and I’m grateful to the people that donate.

@bob_, approximately 18 people die per day waiting for an organ.

This is an interesting question. I can see the merits in both sides of the argument.

My feeling is that maybe donors should be given priority. Since we generally are short on organs, this would effectively result in non-donors not getting organs. But if we were to ever (somehow) get a surplus, they would get one because it seems really sadistic to not give a life-saving organ to someone who needs it, if one is readily available.

This makes me wonder, if two people both need an organ and there’s one available, how is it currently decided who gets it? Some kind of a waiting list? First come first serve?

I can tell you we’d have a whole lot more organ donors if this went into effect. Sometimes people need a selfish reason to be motivated to do anything.

I don’t think it makes sense to compare it to blood donation because blood donation requires a sacrifice; you’re still alive and using that blood. There is just no need to cling onto your organs after you’re dead, in my opinion.

Although most organs for transplantation come from cadavers, almost half of all kidney donors in the US are living, @Mariah. There are living donors who have given lobes of their livers and lungs as well. Now comes the real ethical discussion.

@bkcunningham Oh yeah, I didn’t think of live kidney donations. But that’s not what we’re discussing, right? We’re not saying you have to give up a kidney while alive in order to be eligible to receive an organ. We’re just saying you have to have a little box checked on your driver’s license.

Oh, sorry, @Mariah. I didn’t mean to veer the discussion off course.

Oh no, didn’t mean to imply you were derailing. I just wanted to make sure you didn’t think I thought people needed to sacrifice a kidney while alive in order to qualify for organ donations!

The fact that they refuse to donate should have no bearing. The people who did choose to donate did not choose to donate only to others who donate.

Should people who refuse to give love be able to receive love?

as asked

I think they should be able to receive organs.

This reminds me of a question I asked, basically it said if you are against embryonic stem cell research, but a discovery is made that can treat and illness of yours or a family member, would you use the treatement? Pretty much everyone against it said they would take the treatment.

@Dutchess_III People with HIV cannot receive organs, unless the rules have changed, so in that case it would be a moot point. But, I understand you were using it as an example, I just thought you might be interested.

Excellent question, and my vote is no, so long as they have had an opportunity as an adult to consider the issue and declined by informed consent. Of course, people below the age of consent should get transplants when needed regardless of their current donor status. And yes, I’m on the donor list. I’ve pretty well used up all my parts, but when I am gone, anything any living person can get some additional mileage out of, I want them to have.

If a guy on death row suffers a heart attack, should he be denied medical intervention?
While the two scenarios are clearly not the same, a common ground they share is that of a moral dilemma. I suspect there’s never going to be universal agreement on such weighty issues.

@ucme The root of all moral law is the GOlden Rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” But refusing to be an organ donor, a person has declared what they would have others do unto them. However, in your hypothetical about the prisoner on death row who suffers a heart attack, the moral ilemma is quite different. People who are not either direcctly part of the crime (as either victim or perpetrator) must decide whether to save his life foir the timebeing. Since some deat-row prisoners get exonerated, what would you want done to YOU if you were the prisoner? That is what the prison officials need to decide in your hypothetical.

I don’t agree with letting someone die just to prove a point about a decision they have made for reasons I know nothing about (I know you said that this is only about people who flat out refuse but even then, they must have their reasons), this is why, over the years, I have gone from being for the death penalty to against it. It is not for me to decide who lives or dies and, just because someone has refused to be a donor, doesn’t mean they are a bad person in every aspect of their lives. Also, I agree that once they have received another’s organs and had their lives changed, they may just change their mind.