Comment on Less wrong economic policy

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 15:06:40 GMT

Those who are against easy organ donation often argue that it would provide incentives for doctors to strive less to save people in accidents or suffering from issues like brain tumors, since on strict utilitarian grounds, that person's death might save several others.

Unless there are technical subtleties in the organ transplantation process I'm not aware of, this sounds completely insane to me.

Whatever accidental cognitive goldbricking doctors are guilty of, they're most likely to be guilty of it now, when organs are very scarce, making it highly likely that each organ recovered from a goldbricked patient will be given to some other needy person. If organ donation were the norm, the supply would outstrip demand, and recovering organs wouldn't be a big enough deal to (accidentally) risk your career and your humanity over.

It sounds to me like opponents of organ donation [1] are just voicing squeamish emotions without bothering to make sense.

[1] I think this phrase is actually a complete, isomorphic formulation of the problem. "Who could possibly oppose organ donation?" and so on.

[2] I've restricted my commenting to HN for too long. How do I make pretty superscript footnotes?

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