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Politics : The Castle -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (3659)	8/25/2004 9:31:31 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 7936

A Call To Reason Graham points to the first-person account of a man on the kidney-donor list who turned down a kidney: I thought it would be more difficult, or maybe more complicated, but it was neither. A transplant surgeon called from the University of Minnesota this morning to tell me they had a cadaver kidney for me (I’ve been on the transplant list for four-and-a-half years). “I’ll pass,” I said in a quiet but steady voice. “Call the next person on the list.” The physician wanted a reason. “I’m still working out some ethical issues with the whole transplant business.” There. It was out before I had a chance to even think about censoring myself. Michael Fraase believes he'd be a hypocrite to do otherwise: That was pretty much a lie. I mostly worked out transplant ethics for myself within six months of my diagnosis. But it’s easier than telling the whole story. Or maybe more convenient. The short version of the whole story is that I feel very strongly that corporations should not profit from the misfortune of the chronically ill. It would be hypocritical for me to hold that position and then turn around and benefit from someone else’s misfortune. In order for me to receive a cadaveric kidney transplant, there has to be a cadaver. Get it? Mr. Fraase has fallen prey to dangerous rhetoric. You don't have to look long or hard to find somebody decrying corporations that "prey on the misery of others." I find such rhetoric personally offensive. You see, in less than a year's time I will be a pathology resident. Therefore, it will be correct to say that my whole life will be dedicated to "profiting from the misery of others." To most, cancer is pain and misery and death. To a pathologist cancer is job security. People get sick, and they come to us (through their agent primary physicians) to hire our talents for proper diagnosis of their misery. We profit from their chronic illness. But we pathologists are not the sole group reveling in misery. You can take it further - all doctors profit from the misery of others. If people never got sick, no physician would exist. Yet it goes further than that. Every person alive, save for the theoretical totally self-sufficient man, profits from others' misery. The farmer and grocer profit from others' miserable hunger. The retailer and the seamstress profit from others' miserable cold nakedness. The entertainer profits from others' miserable boredom. Educators profit from other's miserable ignorance. The human being in a state of nature is miserable and is misery defined. But, on second thought, maybe I have characterized it incorrectly. There is another way of looking at this. Mr. Fraase might see it as profiting from others' misery. I see it as profiting from delivering another from misery. Certainly it's possible to deliver someone from miserable conditions charitably without profiting; however, the number of beneficiaries would be substantially lower if noone attempted to seek profits from such misery. Presumably, Mr. Fraase, and others who agree with his point-of-view want to live in a world where people didn't profit from the misery of others; I, however, much prefer to live in a world where they did. (I think the "corporations" qualifications is a little silly - corporations are simply groups of people acting in concert to profit by delivering others from misery. That corporations benefit from certain government favors is, in my eyes, a problem with government, not with corporations.) I give Mr. Fraase the benefit of the doubt that I give all human beings (until priven otherwise) - namely that he is filled with love and goodness and is capable of making the world a better place. I know nothing of Mr. Fraase other than that which he wrote in a single blog entry. I know that he is a conscientious person who adheres strongly to his beleifs. That beneficial prejudice and limited knowledge of his character leads me to say this: I hope you reconsider your position, Mr. Fraase, and I hope you get a new kidney. I think you have been led astray by those (some well-intentioned and some not) who come to their point-of-view by looking at this the wrong way. The cadaver donor is dead and there is nothing to change that. The doctor that would perform the transplant would profit by delivering you from the misery of end-stage renal failure. There is no hypocrisy if you were to reconsider your point-of-view to the way I see things. That you may have to admit you were wrong about this one thing is, I think, a small price to pay for your life. posted by Trent : 2:20 PM trentmcbride.blogspot.com