We All Die

February 10, 2013 Longrider General News, General Rants, misanthropy, Political 17

The Indy has a bleat about the lack of organs for donation. I’m growing increasingly weary of being nagged by these people. I refuse to feel guilty that I am alive and continuing to use my organs for their designed purpose. And, no, I am not on the register and do not intend to go onto it. This is entirely down to this type of persistent nagging. If I die in the right circumstances, they can ask and if Mrs L says “okay” then fine. But I will not succumb to this torrent of guilt tripping that is going on.

Apparently, we are told, an ageing population is leading to greater incidences of organ failure. Well, blow me down, I would never have thought that. Nothing to do with getting older being closer to mortality. We all die. We have to die of something. Organs failing is part of the natural process. Sure, we expect medical science to do something, but sometimes, it just can’t. That’s life – well, death –  but you get my drift.

We should not expect to live forever and there is no right to life. Certainly there is no right to someone else’s organs. If they are donated, they are a gift, a chance for a few more years of life without the help of a dialysis machine, but that is all it is, a gift, not a right –  as well as having to pop all those immunosuppressants. And, no, those of us who are not on the register are not condemning people to death and no we do not have an obligation to those who are suffering organ failure, no matter how compassionate we might feel. The attempt to make this some sort of moral obligation is, itself, immoral.

However, buried in the story is this little line from a Dr Paul Murphy:

I don’t know if deceased donation will ever be enough because people are getting older and they’re dying of diseases that are not compatible with donation.

So if not deceased donation, then live donation? And have you noticed the occasional story of late about people who have donated a kidney or part of their liver to strangers? After all, we are told, one kidney is enough, so might as well give the other one away.

Give a kidney – one’s enough is a charity that aims to raise awareness of altruistic living kidney donation.

Okay, fine, if some folk feel that one of their kidneys or part of their liver is sufficiently redundant to have it taken out. However, there’s a cynic in me that is noting a trend –  a trend to guilt trip us. Two kidneys? How selfish of you –  someone else could be using one of those. And how long before the politicians and puritans latch onto it and start to add it to their nudge agenda –  if they haven’t already, that is.

Let me be clear –  my liver and my two kidneys are staying put. When I’m dead, see above. Otherwise, hands off. You can “raise awareness” all you like, you ain’t having them. We are not a collection of spare parts.

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17 Comments

  2. I agree whole-heartedly and I have always refused to be included on any register of organ donors. I am also suffering from stage four of renal failure and I still refuse to have anyone’s econd hand bits stuffed into me as if were an old Cortina.

    As you so rightly say, we live, our time comes, we die. Doing something ‘just because we can’ is never going to ba an adequate excuse for this costly – and usually unsuccessful – procedure.

    • My view is the same. It tends to spike the mantra trotted out by the hard of thinking that refuseniks should not have donated organs. They assume that we want them.

    • Hedgehog

      Depends how you define unsuccessful. Last I heard average kidney transplant lasts 8 years, some much longer, some barely at all. Personally, I’ve had one that lasted 14 years, and one 18 months (both cadaveric as opposed to live donor). That, coupled with dialysis, means that my life has so far lasted 3 times as long as it would have naturally. More to the point, on the whole it has been of pretty good quality. I still work full-time, still travel, even getting abroad occasionally with a bit of extra planning. And yes, if offered someone else’s secondhand bit again, I’d grab it thankfully.

      That said, I do mean thankfully, as I appreciate that it is – as LR says – a gift. I will never support an opt-out system, and find the recent attempts at trying to guilt-trip people into such a system distasteful at best.

  3. Perhaps they might meet the shortfall by paying for them.

    I was astonished when I was paid for donating blood in Germany in the 1980s. I had done so before at home at of altruism, but that crisp 50DM note guaranteed my attendance on the dot. It was a lot to an impecunious student.

    Since the latest furore over the donation of a smoker’s lungs ‘causing’ the death of a defective, I’ve become a hoarder.

    • Paying for them? But that is immoral, innit?

      Tim Worstall has often pointed out that Iran doesn’t have a problem because they pay for donated organs.

  4. I don’t trust them either.
    You know, why try to save the patient when you get the opportunity to whip out an organ or two instead?

  5. I used to sympathise, I really did, but since government began treating me as something to be manipulated – and many applauded while they did it – they can swivel. Spiteful? Mebbe, but I didn’t start it.

  6. Well, I’ve said it before, but this third renal transplant-awaiting dialysis patient applauds you wholeheartedly. The general push to increase guilt and try to get an opt-out system introduced is just insidious.

    And as for live organ donors, I would never let anyone I cared about donate an organ to me (and indeed have had several disagreements with my consultant about it). First, you are asking someone to undergo a major op. And while in most cases, it may go fine there is always risk – and I am aware of cases where thing haven’t gone smoothly. Second, you are asking them to take on further risk for their own health later in life – what if their one remaining kidney fails for whatever reason? Third, there’s no guarantee that the organ will work. Last I heard, the average transplant lasts about 8 years. Yes, some are still working after 30 years. Others, however, never make it past a matter of months or indeed start functioning at all.

    As for organ failure amongst the elderly, I’m sorry but many shouldn’t even be kept alive on dialysis, nevermind considered for transplantation. I’ve seen them wheeled in every other day, hooked up for 4 hours, then wheeled out again, the same routine for months and never showing any signs of consciousness – husks kept existing because we can’t just let people die anymore.

  7. There is something you have to give up, in order to donate organs post mortem. It is the right, at the end of your life, to die peacefully at home with your loved ones around your bed. Because as soon as you are dead, those organs deteriorate. If you are an organ donor, they need you to die in a hospital that can maintain your oxygenation and circulation until the organs have been harvested from your body.
    Now I would give that up to save a member of my family, but a stranger? No I don’t think so. So I would never register or carry one of those cards, it means that you have effectively surrendered yourself to their system, and they decide who will receive your organs, regardless of your wishes.

    • I think you’ll find most suitable donors, for major organs at least, tend to die in circumstances where they wouldn’t be at home anyway. For example, from major head trauma, where the rest of the body is reasonably unharmed. My own second transplant came from a teenage girl killed in a car crash. The introduction of compulsory seatbelt wearing supposedly reduced the number of donors significantly…..

      (Don’t know true it is, but a former GP of mine once told me that Norfolk and the East of England was a prime area for donors because of all the US airbases, and servicemen forgetting which side of the road to drive on).

  8. I used to quite happily donate blood, and I had made my relatives aware that I was willing and happy for my organs to be donated.

    Now, however, as a fully paid up member of the denormalized club, I wouldn’t donate the sweat from my bum crack.

    They can quite frankly fuck off.

  9. “Let me be clear – my liver and my two kidneys are staying put”

    Understood.

    ::note to self: we can send a team around in the morning to grab an eye. Selfish clot has two of ’em after all.::

    – MJM

  11. I agree and can’t faultt a word quite frankly. I’ll leave this world with what I came into it with (with extra hair ofcourse). I envisage the day when Repo Men (the movie that took its idea from Monty Python’s Meaning of Life) will come around to open you up, where they’ll take whatever compares to the moneys owed. But on another note don’t you ever wonder just why it is that people’s organs are packing in far more frequently than they before?

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