Attention residents of The Green Mountain State! Has your legislature got a deal for you! In return for your vital organs, you could drive free for the rest of your life! While a lot of states have organ donor boxes on their driver's licenses (which we at TTAC encourage you to tick), Vermont wants to sweeten the pot. So the pols have ponied-up a bill that would waive the cost of the driver's license fee for anyone agreeing to part with their parts once they depart. The Burlington Free Press does the math. By participating in the program in your mid-30's, you could save up to $400, provided you live to your late 70's. Of course, finding any organs still fit to be transplanted in a 78-year old donor isn't their problem. That's why the transplant surgeons get paid the big bucks. [thanks to Gord Mack for the link]
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Hard to say how I feel about organ donation. There’s the denouement of Jesus de Montreal, in which a dead actor’s organs are distributed to many of the living. On the other hand, there’s Eric Idle’s cynical organ harvester in The Meaning of Life.
Vermont must not have enough motorcycles, which we in the EMS trade call donorcycles. Young, healthy guys who often die of nice clean head injuries.
I’m not an organ donor. It may be just because I’m a conspiracy theorist, but I want those doctors doing everything they can to save my life, not thinking “well, if he goes out then we can at least use whats in decent working condition.” Screw that.
On the more relevant hand, I’m not sure I’m to big on this one. I’m arguing 99.9% of the time that we should make it harder to get a DL, not cheaper and easier. One of these days people will learn that the reasons the Germans can go 120 on the autobahn and still have less accidents than us is the fact they treat driving as a responsibility and a privledge, not a right to be given on our 16th birthday.
But hey, Vermont tends to be a bit on the wierd side.
Last time I drove in Vermont it seemed that most of the drivers had already lost their testicles, so why not take the rest? ;)
–chuck
@Chuck:
Oh snap.
I’ve yet to hear a convincing, intelligent argument against organ donation other than religious reasons, which are pretty much the exception to everything.
Sorry, sir, but we need your liver.
I have a photographer friend who some time ago was photographing the fitting up of a Boeing 747 as a personal aircraft for a Saudi sheikh. In the belly of the airplane–what used to be the cargo/baggage hold, below the passenger deck–the outfitter (in San Antonio, Texas) was installing a complete medical operating room.
It seemed that the sheikh traveled everywhere with a living organ donor–a handsome, strapping, 24-year-old athlete in perfect health. If the donor’s services were not needed, he simply continued to travel the globe with his boss, eating, drinking and schtupping his way through the best the world had to offer.
If the boss had a heart attack…well, that was part of the job description.
This is large change – a government organization (the Vermont DMV) is acknowledging that people’s organs belong to them, and that they can sell them.
However, I want a bit more than “a free driver’s license” for my organs (and if I’m dead, the $$$ can be paid to my heirs)
The whole subject is fascinating. I have a small little voice that shares Virtual’s fear. I know it’s not a likely thing, but those damn hollywood types make me afraid of it.
The solution is of course, to get so many potential donors that there is no incentive for anyone to want any particular person’s organs.
Being O neg. I would feel guilty not being a donor, so I just have to live with the paranoia.
Economists will have a field day with this, such as comparing the present value of free future licenses for a young person and that for an old one.
The problem is that most people don’t think in terms of a lifetime annuity; they want cash now. And of course, the state doesn’t want to pay now and wait decades for a return on the investment. So to attain the “greater good,” the obvious solution is to take organs at the time of payment. There’s a lot of redundancy to the human body. One can get by fine with one lung, one kidney, one cornea, etc. Indeed, as Vermont voters have proven, a person can live a long life with half a brain.
I ride a motorcycle and I’m an organ donor(my organs might not be any good to anyone with my cronic illness but I tried), but I always wear a helmet. I’m with Virtual Insanity on the lincensing being much harder and more expensive than it is though, not cheaper and easier just cause you trade your innard. Unfortunately people in this country think it’s written into the Constitution that driving should be cheap, easy and idiot proof.
Why on earth do you people think the State of Vermont profits from this? It’s no different than the organ-donor authorization that I’ve checked on my New York license: Albany gets nothing from my decision, the nearest facility able to transplant or to remove organs for transplantation elsewhere does.
I have nothing against organ donation – just be sure to let the recipient of my liver know that its not only a very late model and also a somewhat high mileage unit.
Living in Vermont, having moved here after 30 years in the Golden State, you can take my comments with a grain of road salt.
It sure seems to me that one could sign up for this, go for twenty years or so, save “all that money”, then, when you reach the point where you shouldn’t be driving anymore, just put in your will that you don’t want to donate your organs and want to be cremated (or buried) whole. So. What have they gained? Not a whole lot. What do the drivers save? A whole $25. a year or so? How much fuel oil will that buy me to keep warm with?
What is the point? Exactly. I am glad that my state lawmakers are busy with this, though.
Car Guy
Sounds like my Uncle. He has often bragged that he is an organ donor, but the final joke is on them: He’s lived his life in a way his organs won’t help anyone.
I’m all for anything that encourages organ donation, since the lines keep getting longer. I suspect that in 15-20 years it will be possible to grow new organs, but in the mean time, we need to save as many people as we can.
Vermont has a good idea here. Clearly for the vast majority of people the possibility of donating organs isn’t going to come up, and that is lucky for them. For the relatively few who become donor candidates it makes sense to do everything possible to encourage it, and waiving the nominal driver’s license fee in return for people making their organs available if the horrible happens is a great idea.
If something unthinkable happens to me and another person can get their eyesight back or live to see their grandchildren born then all the better. I don’t want to die, but if the unthinkable happens it would be nice if someone else enjoyed a real upside as a consequence of my misfortune.
Now that Saudi sheik thing is just horrific, and I believe the story. Tell me again why we are OK with spending a billion dollars PER DAY on imported oil?
I support donation, but having said that I have very serious issues with the way that donated organs are distributed here in the US.
Hospitals make big money performing transplants, recipients (or their insurance carriers) get charged hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the donor and his/her family gets squat.
I might feel comfortable donating my organs, if the hospital and doctors and medical consumable vendors are also required to donate their products/services. It would anger me too much to know that Humana Hospitals would stand to profit tens of thousands of dollars from my generosity…
And it would also be nice if organs weren’t fast-lined to the wealthy, famous and politically connected, with no regard to how deserving they were or much use they would get from them. Why did hundreds of Hepatitis patients get sidelined so Mickey Mantle could get a new liver in two days? Just to die of cancer a few months later?
So I’m really conflicted: in favor of giving life to others, but very much against propping up the broken and crooked system that distributes these precious gifts.
Vermont is opening the door to allowing the sale of human organs, for better or worse.
I very much doubt that anybody gets “charged” for a donated organ. Yes, medical staffs and hospitals charge for the procedures, but so they should. Who ever said they’re supposed to do their work for free just because somebody donated an organ? If you give your buddy a crate motor, does that mean the Chevy dealer is supposed to install it for free?
cjdumm,
I think you are confusing a couple issues. First of all, asking doctors and hospitals to donate their services just because you donate your organs isn’t exactly fair to them. You are donating something that has no virtually no value to you, and you are asking them to work for free after spending over a decade of their lives learning the skills needed to do a transplant.
If the real economics involved in being a doctor vs. other career paths were really well known, we would have half as many doctors, and we would have to pay for ALL their training.
I am not aware of any data showing the wealthy get fastlined organs. Could you point us to some? I can tell you that socialized medicine moves the discrimination from the wealthy to the powerful and influential, because I lived it (and nearly died from it).
I am also not sure which way to stand on the selling of organs. I lean towards allowing the sale. If everyone who had no religious convictions against it were to donate, the resulting costs would be next to nothing due to over supply.
In fact, over supply would solve most of the existing problems with the whole system, and I think this is what Vermont is aiming for. If it works, it will turn out to be a really cheap solution.