11,000 People

This blog segment involves three persons: a dumb doctor (DD), a person in need of an organ replacement, and a death-row prisoner willing to give his parts for the life-salvation of the second.

Caveat Alert: this bit of bloggery dives from the severe platform of the live and functioning course of action that is the Death Penalty.  Whether or not the death penalty should be allowed will not be decanted on this page.

The argument that will be examined is made by Dr. Arthur Caplan--the director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania.

This is an important read because there may be some of us that hold to the course that persons of doctorate-standing, having obtained a certain modicum of sense and sensibility, having accumulated an acuteness and particular wisdom, and, to a certain degree, an all-encompassing compassion where it pertains to the human animal, will display those affectations in their behavior and dictates.  Caplan's essay proves that this is not the case.  

This particular DD is the HMIC (head-man-in-charge) of a portion of one of the most highly-regarded, globally-renowned, educational facilities in the world.  DD's article is found on NBCNEWS.com's site entitled: "Organs from inmates? That idea should be DOA."  He claims:

• the idea of prisoner organ-donation is impractical and unethical
• that it is a difficult concept to wrestle with morally
• that we, the public, should produce a grandstanding denial toward the prisoner to thwart efforts on his part to assuage any remorseful, lingering sentiments for the imprisoning offense

DD! Isn't the ultimate purpose of advanced education to offer answers, suggestions, and promote thought-processes that improve society and our lives as a whole?  

To concern ourselves with whether a prisoner 'feels' better for the offensive crimes he is or is not repentant of, is wasted effort.  But those left behind who'll continue to suffer by the addle-pated efforts of this doctor is more of a concern and is on the verge of being as heinous as the prisoners' actions against humanity themselves.

Dr. Caplan is directing his non-sensical apoplexy toward those who might be grossed-out at the contemplation of a donated organ from persons accused and convicted.  (If I were a person in need of an organ replacement, I wouldn't give a single flip, care, spit, or poo where my new parts came from...as long as they could adapt to my personal environment and offer hope for a modicum of normalcy.)

Caplan's attempts to support his facts are feckless and floppy.  
Check it:

"Should society permit Christian Longo [a man on death row for murder, wanting to donate his organs at death] any psychological satisfaction? What do the surviving family and friends of his wife think about giving him the chance to 'pay back society' for his crimes." 

Firstly, pertaining to 'permitting psychological satisfaction': we, (the jurors and judges of Longo's case) have already decided and determined the destiny of this prisoner--he is death-sentenced.  We have gone far beyond consideration of psychological satisfaction, haven't we? To consider it now is folly.

 

Nay, allow the claim of the dead; stab not the fallen; 

what prowess is it to slay the slain anew?

Sophocles' Antigone.

   

Secondly, concerning the "pay back [of] society": there is none.  The man will still be executed.  There is no redemption for him from his fellow mammals.  He has come to his personal raggedy edge and we're giving him his final shove. 

Finally, the fact (if it is one) that the prisoner may or may not find 'redemption' for his act of attrition should not be considered, (which is something [IMHO] we daren't ever stand in the way of.)  What SHOULD be considered and what we DO have control of remains: there is a child, a man, a teen, a woman in monstrous need of what will otherwise become a beetle's breakfast.

According to logical diorama, DD should know that credible arguments cannot be based on feelings, rumor, or wishful thinking. He of all people should base his opinions on hard, empirical, verifiable observations and solid, logical reasoning.  Caplan's argument flounders under examination: the logic is missing, the feelings are high, and the argument should be squashed.

The part that is so staggeringly-disheartening is that this DD has the ability to help alleviate a national predicament, to bring some promise and hope to desperate bodies in need.  And still he writes (and initiates) nonsense.  Is the DD himself not made of human parts?  

There are currently more than 11,000 people on a  

waiting-for-transplant list...in Texas alone.  
There are 3,170 persons on death row.

Organ donation at death should be default rather than exception for ALL persons, 

not just prisoners...so all that is salvageable, shall be salvaged.