An extreme version of this is: What should the German health service do if someone says they are willing to donate a kidney as long as it doesn’t go to a Jew?

On the one hand, nobody is forced to donate a kidney and by forbidding this we’re making things worse for an innocent patient. On the other hand, it can be seen as the state sanctioning this kind of discrimination.

  • Marccalexx@feddit.de
    5·
    1 year ago

    In Germany what you describe won’t be possible: organ donation from a living donor is only allowed if both person are quite close to each other (partners, family and so on). Organ donation from dead people is anonymous: the doctors that take the organs out of the dead person doesn’t know who receives them. Only Eurotransplant knows.

    I think that’s a very good system. Organs should be given and received as anonymous as possible.

  • Teon@kbin.social
    3·
    1 year ago

    You’re donating an organ, or you’re not.
    This ain’t fuckin’ Burger King. You can’t have it your way!

  • livus@kbin.social
    2·
    1 year ago

    In practical terms it’s very normal for people to only donate a kidney because they have a specific recipient in mind.

    Trying to say no, “you can not donate your kidney only to your son, you have to make the kidney available to everyone” does not make sense.

    If you are running an anonymous donation facility then practicality comes into play. How realistic is it to keep tabs on all kinds of weird preferences? Matches are already hard enough. And how do you disclose responsibly?

    From an ethical point of view you need to look at the big picture. It is not enough to say that this is a kidney that someone will get but would not if you don’t allow discrimination. You have to also think about whether such a policy will encourage people specifying who otherwise wouldn’t. And then a growing imbalance in recipients.

  • dan@lemm.ee
    1·
    1 year ago

    No.

    If you’re alive then you’re totally be within your rights to choose who to voluntarily help or donate something to. Don’t like the look of that homeless guy for whatever reason? Don’t give them money. You can be as racist or misogynistic or otherwise generally cunty as you like, and as long as it’s your personal money/time/organs and you keep quiet about your selection criteria you’re unlikely to have a problem.

    However once you’re dead, if you want your dickish restrictions honoured then you have to write them down somewhere. And any organisation set up to manage organ donations that agrees to facilitate such restrictions is likely to find themselves on the pointy end of a discrimination lawsuit at some point.

  • Blizzard@lemmy.zip
    1·
    1 year ago

    I think if you volunteer as an organ donor, you waive ownership of your bodyparts and leave it to doctors to asses who needs it most.

  • bh11235@infosec.pub
    1·
    1 year ago

    From my point of view you’ve just given an excellent argument against the philosophy that I will call, for lack of a better term, “beep-boop utilitarianism”. Allowing such a donation has an immediate, tangible and quantifiable benefit; but the norm you are eroding by doing so is much more valuable, and may be impossible to renegotiate if lost.

  • ∟⊔⊤∦∣≶@lemmy.nz
    0·
    1 year ago

    Excellent question. I have to put myself in their shoes. I don’t want my kidneys going to… a member of the North Korean dictatorship, or the CCP. Or any of the elite in Dubai. I don’t see anything wrong with my preferences there, so we would have to allow people to discriminate indiscriminately. I guess I would have to be in favour. There are people that I think are more deserving than others. Jeffery Dahmer isn’t getting my organs.