Who owns you? Do you own you? Are you the ultimate one that has ownership of your person, your being and your physical presence? There is one thing for sure in the news this morning, the Government doesn't think so. The Government thinks it owns your body. Alan Johnson, the Secretary of State for Health, has decided to make the question of registering everyone on the organ donor register unless they opt-out part of the health agenda. He's raise a "taskforce" to look at the question of what they like to call "presumed consent".
On past perforamnce it is fair to equally presume that the this "solution" to the lack of available organs for transplant is their stated position, however it is wholly disingenuous to call it "presumed consent". It is actually "presumed ownership". At its very core, a policy that automatically states that every man, woman and child in the country is available for harvest after death unless they specifically say otherwsie shift the the ownership presumption of our very physical presence on to the state.
"Ahhhh!" but the cries go up. "We need organs and this will solve the problem, and you can still opt-out". The argument against however is not a negation of the problem. It is simply putting the fact that whilst something must be done, this something is not something we must do. How about, instead of using donor cards which require a person to consciously make the decision to ask themselves the question about donating, we start asking the question to people more directly?
There is nothing to stop a doctor/hospital registration process asking the opt-in question. Whilst it may sound macabre to say "if you die do fancy giving your corneas away", it is certainly better than the state presuming ownership of people unless they state otherwise. After all, how can you presume that the person you take the organs from is someone that wasn't on their way to opt-out when the bus ran them over? Let's not beat around the bush here, the argument on this one is not about solving the problem of organ donation, it is far more deep than that.
This is about the fundamental relationship between individuals and the state, and the ultimate question of property rights. The reality that we own ourselves is evident in so much of our law already, a quick look at the fact that it is not illegal to take but merely illegal to possess them tells you this fact.
I own me. Not the Government. It has no place presuming ownership of my body from birth until I tell it otherwise. To do so is an affront not to my civil liberties, but liberty itself.
Friday, September 21, 2007
It's not "presumed consent'. It's "presumed ownership" and it's wrong
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20 comments:
Given that there are laws on marketing email to insist on opt-in schemes, it seems bizarre that they would do this with people's body parts. Ick.
Even if an opt-out system isn't the best solution, at least people are now aware of the problem and realise that something has to be done.
I can see that CCTV cameras can provide useful info and am fairly happy with ID cards but this, I agree, is a step too far. Dave B's thoughts also went through my mind when I read your blog.
Have we turned into the road leading to Soylent Green?
Or has my paranoia taken a step too far?
It seems to me that ownership of my corpse and ownership of my body are two entirely different things.
If it's ownership of my body (alive that is) then I agree entirely with your point. Ownership of my corpse is another matter.
If you take the structure of your argument to extremes you'd stop anybody breathing in air you'd once exhaled.
'If you take the structure of your argument to extremes you'd stop anybody breathing in air you'd once exhaled.'
WTF?
This is a fascinating ethical argument. Until recently, I thought I agreed with the 'opt-out' proposal, but am steadily resiling from that as I read arguments such as yours.
I do think everyone should think much more about their end-of-life options; my corpse will go to the School of Anatomy if it is viable, otherwise take whatever is useful and cremate the rest.
Whatever their choice, individuals should make it clear to their executors, who are the 'owners' of the corpse in law.
I'm not surprised - this ever more totalitarian government is pushing forward the concept of the state owning everything - Napoleonic style. It is starting with permits to use the water around our shores, the skies above our heads, the roads and pavements under our feet - and why should we be surprised that they feel they own our very organs? Welcome to Soviet Britain. Of course - it is all for our own good.....
As usual the government completely fails in its job which is to make the case for Donor Cards and advertise them widely. So they opt to interfere with our right to choose positively. I have a Donor card and want my body to be available but if this opt-out system is instigated I will opt-out.
My point wasn't very well put. I was alluding to the fact that my exhaled breath contains matter that was once part of 'me'. Just as my future corpse will have been once part of 'me'.
Perhaps it would have been better to use my hair clippings on a barber's floor as an example. If anybody were to sneak up behind me and steal a lock of my hair that would be depriving me of owning it.
However once disconnected from me in the barber's there is an assumption of consent for the barber to do what he will with the 'dead' hair.
I view my future corpse in the same way as my hair on the barber's floor.
Inheritance law already recognises this in that if one dies intestate there are assumptions made regarding the distribution of the estate.
Taken to the extreme your argument would lead to the destruction (burying or cremation) of ones worldly goods were one to die intestate.
Look upon the proposed legislation as an avoidable death duty/inheritance tax.
What a complete load of bollocks.
I used to casualy think that opting out was the way to go cos it doesnt realy matter to me what they do with me after im dead.Now you naughty man have made me think about it and your right the state can go fuck off it cant just assume ownership of my corpse.I dont presume ownership of the cat that lives at my house,money changed hands and i feed and vet him but i dont own him.
I agree with Dizzy's arguments. My body is ineluctably mine and when I die, my family will take ownership of it and dispose of it for me. Not the state.
The presumption of the state owning people's mortal remains is sickening. We always respected the dead before. We even respect the bodies of our pets who die because they housed that personality, that character, that spirit.
And how nightmareish for the family to know that the body of their loved family member is being carved up and plundered even before they've left the hospital.
I have loathed, from the first time I read it, this dreadful, manipulative use of the word "harvest", which is meant to sound so lovely and unthreatening and so full of the goodness of nature. Crops are grown to be harvested. That is their point. That is why they are planted. Specifically to ripen and be harvested. You cannot "harvest" something that wasn't grown for the purpose.
This whole thing is being driven by the aggressive transplant industry in the West. There's nothing more aggressive and arrogant than medical science.
The very serious ethical considerations aside, there's also the problems of universal access to healthcare - would we see a change in the attitudes of medics to those who had opted out???
Would an already authoriatarian government decide that once they owned our bodies after death insist that we kept them in a fit state during life?
This is potentially more explosive even that euthanasia as a fundamental shift in the reposibilities of medics over us as patients.
As Dizzy stated at the end - it is an affront to liberty.
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wonderfulfor...
If you see no problem with the use of your body after death - fine. Get on the donor register, it's there, it works.
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This may be a bit far-fetched, but given the way this government has behaved over the last 10 years, it could be the thin end of the wedge. Compulsory donor register + identity and DNA database by stealth = "Give us one of your kidneys. You can manage fine with the other one."
Dizzy: keep re-raising this one, please. This something that can't just be a passing debatelet.
So, the State wants to determine the final disposal of all or part of our corpse. But the State already possesses all our medical records. The State is therefore in a position to "predict" whose organs would be beneficially harvested on our death. [Not necessarily beneficial for the present user, though.]
Once they have pushed this presumed "consent" through, are we then going to have a resurgence of the debate about euthanasia? Not only would the person who refused to die on cue be a nuisance to the health care system, be maliciously withholding the inheritance from their heirs, but also be unreasonably delaying the hopes of carefully selected photogenic priority would be transplant recipients! The seriously ill person would deserve to be despatched for the greater good of society. Wouldn't they?
Would Hitler/Stalin have approved of this measure?
There really is a great deal to resist here.
Dizzy, you wrote at 1,59:
'What a complete load of bollocks'
There's no answer to that.
And if we do opt out, where will that fact be recorded?
In some humungous state database, no doubt.
What's the betting that, come the moment, it turns out they can't access it? (it'll be down for maintenance, or shut for lunch, or just hopelessly corrupted, or just plain down, or they'll forget Doris' password, you know, the one that always does this stuff for us, etc)
And then it'll be "presumed consent" all right.
The opt-out will be worthless.
I sent in a comment on this subject and it wasn't run. It certainly wasn't offensive in any way - indeed, it supported your position - and when I clicked Send I got the notice about blogowner approval. I was wondering why it wasn't approved.
I sent it in when Hugh at 3:56 yesterday afternoon was the last commenter.
"...would we see a change in the attitudes of medics to those who had opted out???"
Would we be able to notice a change from their current attitude, I wonder...?
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