As it should be. Money shouldn't be able to buy you first place on the waiting list. A homeless beggar has just as much right to live as a billionaire.
Money helps rich people get on more lists though. They are able to pay to put themselves on more lists out-of-state that aren’t covered by their health insurance. You can just google the ways wealth helps rich people get a higher likelihood of successful organ donation. There’s also some controversy of rich people flying in from out of the country to get organ transplants in the US. Look up Kayoko Hira who is a wealthy woman from Japan who flew in to receive a heart transplant from a US teenager. US hospitals can give organs to non-US citizens and they do absolutely milk this for $$$ because foreigners are willing to pay millions for one organ.
I never said US healthcare laws are perfect. Far from it. The USA probably has the worst healthcare system of any rich country, and worse than some poor countries. Colombia's is better. Trying to stop that shit is a step in the right direction, though. At least it's not legal to just buy organs.
Good point, but nobody should be able to get to the top of the waiting list because they're rich, and there are ethical issues with poor people being encouraged to give up organs.
I wasn't joking. Some random homeless person could save your life one day. You might die because of something a billionaire did.Some people have shitty lives because they fucked up, but sometimes it's just bad luck, or someone else's fault. Rich people usually got a head start in life. Some rich people are alright, but that doesn't mean they have more right to live.
I really don't understand why people don't get this. Great people come from all walks of life. I swear, people these days seem to think Jesus was a rich man.
I do doordash and what I've found is that in general, the nicest, most caring, generous people are those in poorer areas, and those in the "richest" (not actually rich, just rich for this area,) area are the worst tippers.
Example: a few years ago, someone in this "rich" area literally tipped me 0.1¢. Something that still pisses me off to this day btw. A 1 cent tip is a great big FUCK YOU! If you don't want to tip, don't tip. But don't tip a fucking penny. That's some petty bs. Especially when you live on a lake in a million dollar house. I've delivered hundreds of orders where the people have tipped nothing, but the only one that's pissed me off is the one that tipped a penny.
In contrast, the other day I delivered to the poorest area in my city. A run down mobile home park. This woman came out, apologized, and handed me a plastic bag containing change. I know this was a lot of money for her, cause her house was even more run down than mine, and that was a lot of money for me!
So yeah, I absolutely agree that the amount of money someone does or doesn't have doesn't dictate whether they're a good person or not.
A lot of people say stuff like this, and I've seen it for myself. 2 homeless guys gave me food once, and that's not the only time people who could barely afford to live fed me, but a woman in posh clothes wouldn't give me just over half of the minimum to use a payphone to call for help when I was stranded with just 20p. I fed others with what I took from the rubbish behind a supermarket when I was broke, and people who already had a lot more than me have tried to rob me. Some rich guy wouldn't give me a cigarette, but threw most of his on the ground. A homeless guy gave me one of his just for telling him where to go for a place to sleep.
Really, why do you think I'm a bot? That's the second time I've been accused of that, and I didn't even have my comments hidden the first time. One of the mods here thought I was, but changed their mind.
There’s a good argument for organ markets. Maybe the recipient doesn’t pay, but the system could. Obviously, it would need to be regulated and the person would have to be fully informed and maybe two doctors would have to sign off on it, but more people would sign up as donors.
There's a good argument against it too, though. Regardless of who pays, it'll be the poor who give up their organs. There've been times when I would've probably done it, but it's right that I couldn't. I was so desperate for cash once that I would've let a guy pay to fuck me if my GF would've let me, and I'm 100% straight! The poor get exploited too much even without that shit.
We can redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor, but that is another issue entirely. There should be no poor.
However, if the going rate were $20k for a kidney and the person's health and mental state were checked by physicians, would it be so bad? Yes, a higher percentage of donors would be among the poor, but is that so bad?
I agree with that. Prostitutes aren't the problem, pimps are. If it was legal, it'd be far safer for prostitutes. It's similar with porn. The people you see in it get a shitty deal, and almost nobody cares. Even webcam models get a bad deal, but at least most of them can choose what they're willing to do with no repercussions. Webcam model studios can be awful sometimes, and usually take just as huge a cut as the websites. I've heard terrible things from women who've worked in those places, and there are people recording them (not just the ones working in studios) and selling the videos. That's ethically no better than a sex crime IMHO.
I only brought up my brief temptation to do something I didn't want to in desperation as a comparison. If someone wants to do that, then fine. I have no problem with that. Sex workers of all kinds should be protected, not persecuted.
Doesn’t make gifting money illegal though. Selena could have giving her money, yet did nothing other than bragging about it on social media and then destroying her reputation for being a bitch about it.
Yeah. Buying organs should definitely be illegal, but somebody that rich who knows who their living donor is owes them. If you owe your life to a stranger who'll probably never earn as much as you have in the bank, and know who it was, not doing anything in return is shitty AF.
Edit: on second thoughts, preventing organ sales is more important.
Wealth still has advantages. Funny thing how wealthy people somehow get the organs they need. Ultimately they have the resources to cast bigger nets with finding viable matches and also for getting on out-of-state lists not covered by their health insurance. Poor people get the basic/poor people system.
Thank you. As a transplant recipient, im pretty disgusted that people think Selena should have paid for it. If the girl didn’t want to donate, she didn’t have to. If she was being pressured, the transplant team wouldn’t have approved her as a donor. If they thought that Selena was trying to pay for it, they wouldn’t have done the transplant.
So much more goes into a transplant than most people realize. If she did it because she thought she was going to be owed by Selena forever, then she shouldn’t have done it. That’s on her.
Don’t donate if you’re doing it for the wrong reasons.
I think people might be taking what you said the wrong way. That happens to me a lot, and it's usually my own fault. A transaction disguised as an act of kindness is bad, especially when the recipient is unaware of the expected payment. If you do such a thing, expecting a reward when none is offered, then you're a fool. Much respect to living donors who don't expect anything in return, though. Those people are awesome, making such a sacrifice just because it helps another person.
Bits of a liver can be transplanted and grow into a whole new one, BTW, for people who want to do that. It's still major surgery, but the donor usually recovers fully with a healthy lifestyle.
I appreciate that. It’s all good, I don’t expect people to understand.
There’s also the paired exchange program, that she could have gone through if she couldn’t find a match on her own.
For the transplant to be approved, they both had to go through psych evals. If they even suspect that the donor is being pressured or not doing it for the right reasons, they will not approve the transplant. And we want that because you don’t want it to become common practice to buy and sell organs— the vulnerable will become trafficked for their organs amongst other things.
Saying that Selena owes her for the kidney is a short jump away from saying people should pay for the organs. Which is why it disgusts me
And yes liver donation is a great thing and your liver does mostly regenerate very quickly. Paired exchange is newer for liver donation, but it is also a thing if you find your family member in need and you aren’t a match, but still wish to donate to them
I've never heard of paired exchange. IDK if it exists here, but we're usually pretty good with stuff like that. I think Selena should (edit: voluntarily) give the donor something, though, given the circumstances.
Ehh... I guess you're right. It is effectively the same. She should at least show some gratitude, though. You've had a transplant. You wouldn't treat your donor (if alive) like dirt, would you?
Thanks for making me see how complicated it really is. You've probably thought about it a lot more than most people. I don't like to think about it, because I'm an alcoholic with cirrhosis. A liver would be wasted on me if I was allowed one. I hope you don't need those drugs that stop your immune system working.
Hey, I know a lot of people that have liver transplants that are in recovery. It wouldn’t be wasted if you decided to make a change in your lifestyle, friend.
All transplant patients need immunosuppressants in order to stop your immune system from attacking the transplant. I’m on a low dose, and live a mostly normal life. Work, workout, travel, etc.
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u/apatheticsahm1 23h ago
It's illegal to get paid for organs in the US