Sat 29 Jul 2006
What a strange world we live in
Posted by rt under Uncategorized[4] Comments
So I was listening to the radio the other day, and some Republican congressman or senator dude was talking about why he voted against the stem cell bill. As part of his delicious slippery slope argument he said something to the effect of “if we allow this, someday we may start harvesting the organs of death row prisoners because like the discarded embryos they are going to die soon too.”
What struck me was not that his argument was dumb — I’m rather used to that by now. Instead what struck me was that it’s considered unethical to harvesting the organs of a prisoner, but to kill them is considered ethical to this person. The funny thing is that I have a strong suspicion that this strange ethical position is actually majoritarian, yet it makes absolutely no sense at all. Prisoners may not have the rights to live, yet they are allowed the right to keep their organs beyond the grave.
July 30th, 2006 at 6:51am
Dude, you seem to be implying that politicians actually care about the issues they spout hellfire about. The stem cell debate is an abortion debate in disguise, and thus just another stupid wedge issue.
The moral question you bring up is quite interesting though.
July 30th, 2006 at 10:25am
joh3n: yes exactly, which is why I wasn’t really surprised that a politician made such an argument. It was the ethical question that really struck me, because I suspect that if you did a public poll there would be an overwhelming majority support for both (a) capital punishment; and (b) opposing prisoner organ harvesting.
So long as it causes the prisoner no pain, it strikes me that it should be perfectly acceptable to grab all of the organs possible from a prisoner who has exhausted his appeals and will die the next day. Er, by “perfectly acceptable” what I actually mean is, relatively more ethical than actually killing them.
July 31st, 2006 at 9:31pm
RT, I have to disagree with you… but I’m not sure why. Something doesn’t seem right about taking people’s organs without their permission, even from those who are about to die a needless death anyway, and even though it would likely save other people (or improve the quality of their lives). I can’t put my finger on the reason that this seens wrong, though.
Also, let’s not forget the spectre of the transplanted organ taking over the mind of the person, like when Homer got Snake’s hair and it made him evil. Er.
August 1st, 2006 at 11:20pm
Joey: Of course it seems wrong, that’s the whole point. But as you suggest there isn’t a reason why it seems wrong, it’s just the nonsensical ethical structure we have right now. You really can’t logically defend the right to punish a person by taking his life but not his kidney.
The logical conclusions are that either both are acceptable, both are unacceptable, or that taking organs is preferential to taking lives. The latter argument sounds really bad but north americans are still not ready to accept the idea that capital punishment is wrong.