Should Organ Donation Be Mandatory? (Supplemental)

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Let's do this one up right.

Another thread posed the same question, but without a poll. I'm starting a poll as a supplement to it.

Perhaps the mods can merge the two threads?

I'm not sure about certain organs tho - ie my brain and liver for different, but obvious reasons

No, for the same reasons selling your organs is illegal. Once it becomes law, the line becomes blurred.

Mandatory? Most assuredly not. I see a host of medical-ethical issues coming into play here, not the least of which is the creation of a therapeutic incentive to withhold treatment from a terminal patient with viable organs. When I suggest a DNR to a patient, I have no other incentive but the patient's quality of life. To create an internal pressure where my surgical colleagues are looking for donors is to blur what should be an absolutely clear ethical line.

And that's just post-mortem donation. There is nothing in this thread to distinguish an inter vivos gift of tissue. Kidneys and bone marrow are both donated by living donors--most often in directed donation, where the donor knows the recipient and donates with the express intention of therapeutic transplant to that recipient. But there are also undirected donations, and these are also valuable from a therapeutic perspective but we certainly should not (in my view) be compelling either type of donation.

But all that being said, tissue donation is a laudable act that saves countless lives. To the extent that we can encourage tissue donation, we should do so.

No way, it should not be made mandatory. There is so many ethical issues about this, I would not know where to begin.. But yeah we could start at looking at a patient that is very sick, yet has some organs that work. And since that person is "most likely" to die from their sickness then the organs should be harvested... HOW HORRIBLE..

No way - absolutely and emphatically no way...

As soon as one is dead, of course. When a person is dead they are just resources that should be used to the fullest extent possible; they cannot feel, come back, think but they can help the living by being a resource for raw materials. As a precaution against organ harvesting from the terminally ill, I suggest strict punishments for those who withhold treatment from the terminally ill for the purpose of getting their organs.

Of course, cloning could soon make this debate moot.