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My Left Kidney

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Re: My Left Kidney

#181

Post by ryanbrunner »

matisseverduyn wrote: post #23

"But looking more closely at the increased deaths, they were mostly from autoimmune diseases that couldn’t plausibly be related to their donations." Kidneys make calcitriol. One kidney means you'll make less, and if you don't supplement, you'll become deficient. Deficiency would (possibly) lead to autoimmune diseases. Also EPO (erythropoietin). One kidney means less, and less (possibly) means fewer new red blood cell…

One small advantage of kidney donation is that it comes with lifetime screening without some of the gatekeeping normally attached to that. I dunno exactly how it works in the US, but here in Canada you can't just really demand blood tests purely for screening reasons, there needs to be a reason for it. But if you're a donor, your transplant clinic will insist on periodic screening both to monitor for GFR dropping as well as other issues like the ones you mention.

Transplant centres vary for sure (to a surprisingly huge degree), but at least where I am if you do donate the clinic will be watching out for this stuff on your behalf.

Re: My Left Kidney

#182

Post by TheDong »

woodruffw wrote: post #170
eru wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And sure, it sucks to be the one rejected by an effectively automated process[0], but it's better for everyone than not having any process at all. You could have a much lighter weight process, that leaves more of the decision making powers with individuals and families. That would be cheaper and overall suck less.

Placing the responsibility with families results in compelled donations (“you love your Dad, don’t you?”). Our medical system is (imperfectly) built around consent; that consent needs to be in evidence.

Yeah. When my dad had a kidney failure I had a lot of fun proving to the doctors that I did not in fact love my dad, and that's why I was giving him a kidney.

Really though, the definition of "compelled" is fuzzy, and mostly for medical stuff we take "consent" to mean "sound of mind" and "not overtly coerced, i.e. by threats of violence or such".

Is someone able to "consent" if they're only donating blood or a kidney because their religion tells them to do good? That sounds like a cult, huh. What about because they love someone? What about because the local blood drive literally gives you 10 bucks and a candy for donating blood?

Like, you can argue around enough and say everyone is always compelled at all times by "society" or "their upbringing", but that's an obviously useless definition.

What we have now, you getting a private meeting with a nurse or such who asks "are you really sure? Is anyone making you do this?"... that, plus doing basic mental health checks of "does not have dementia or mental retardation", that seems like it should be enough for any real situation.

Trying to say "No, someone who's famous might be doing this to write a blog post about it, that's not okay" is an interpretation of consent that simply is too far gone to be useful.

Re: My Left Kidney

#183

Post by reducesuffering »

woodruffw wrote: post #167
nyssos wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main recipients of EA political funding (what little there is: the majority of money goes to global health and development, with AI safety as a distant second) are centrist Democrats. They're too right-wing for my taste too, but calling them "reactionaries" dilutes the word into meaninglessness.

I meant more the accelerationist and AI derisking contingents, not political donations. Both are explicitly reactionary in the most basic sense (and accelerationism is also reactionary in the far-right sense).

> Both are explicitly reactionary in the most basic sense

In the most basic sense, as a reaction? Are weapons regulations "reactionary?" I think it's well established what using the term "reactionary" is, and it doesn't apply to X-risk concerns. Also Eliezer Yudkowsky has been "reacting" against AI X-risk since you were a toddler, in case you thought this was some recent phenomena...

Re: My Left Kidney

#184

Post by sulam »

mpreda wrote: post #76
matisseverduyn wrote: post #23

"But looking more closely at the increased deaths, they were mostly from autoimmune diseases that couldn’t plausibly be related to their donations." Kidneys make calcitriol. One kidney means you'll make less, and if you don't supplement, you'll become deficient. Deficiency would (possibly) lead to autoimmune diseases. Also EPO (erythropoietin). One kidney means less, and less (possibly) means fewer new red blood cell…

About erythropoietin (EPO), I understand it's a hormone whose amount is regulated by the need for oxygen in the blood (i.e. a feedback loop which regulates the amount of red blood cells to be just what is needed to satisfy the oxygen needs of the body). So EPO is not limited by the ability of the kidneys to produce it (I expect, by a large margin). So one kidney would just as well be able to produce all the EPO you m…

A tour full of competitive cyclists would beg to differ with this analysis.

Re: My Left Kidney

#185

Post by sadtoot »

mort96 wrote: post #117

This was an enjoyable read. The solution of giving people money to donate their kidneys is terrifying to me however. I do not like the thought of desperate people selling their internal organs to survive one bit. Of course, if inequality was dealt with and nobody was desperately poor, it would be a different question. If everyone had enough money to comfortably get by, and the extra $100,000 from a kidney donation wo…

selling kidneys doesn't preclude us having the same thorough screening process we have now, although it means there may be people who try harder to game the screening process.

i just don't see kidney donation as being a significant enough harm to outweigh the harm of the recipient not getting the kidney. if we're worried about people being financially desperate, we should allow organs to be sold and build a stronger social safety net (with the money we save on dialysis?)

Re: My Left Kidney

#186

Post by sadtoot »

Quinzel wrote: post #43

I’m keeping both my kidneys for if someone I love needs one. When I am dead however, they can take my kidneys, heart, lungs, liver and whatever else that is salvageable and give them to whoever needs them (assuming I die in the right circumstances that this is possible).

just so you know, around 1% of people die in conditions where their organs are elligible for transplantation. then there's the factor that kidneys from living donors generally last longer for the recipient

Re: My Left Kidney

#187

Post by taylorius »

eru wrote: post #134
mort96 wrote: post #117

This was an enjoyable read. The solution of giving people money to donate their kidneys is terrifying to me however. I do not like the thought of desperate people selling their internal organs to survive one bit. Of course, if inequality was dealt with and nobody was desperately poor, it would be a different question. If everyone had enough money to comfortably get by, and the extra $100,000 from a kidney donation wo…

Iran allows paying compensation to kidney donors. You can study how they are doing. Hint: they don't have much of a wait list. > I do not like the thought of desperate people selling their internal organs to survive one bit. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repugnant_market Do you prefer desperate people have fewer options? Especially, do you prefer taking options from people that they prefer to take?

Yes. Because the second order effects of giving those desperate people the option of donating their organs is worse for the society going forward.

Re: My Left Kidney

#188

Post by matthewdgreen »

johnfn wrote: post #98
BobaFloutist wrote: post #8

I respect the British organizers’ willingness to sacrifice their reputation on the altar of doing what was actually good instead of just good-looking. Surely their reputation is a factor in their ability to do good? Optics sometimes necessitate sacrificing the "mathematically superior choice" for one that's worse in the name of not pissing off a ton of people the support of whom you rely upon.

It's easy to say in retrospect, but it's not like all the movement ever did in it's entire existence was buy a single castle. Do you really think they were expecting EA to explode in the public consciousness after the SBF thing and to have all of their line-items exhaustively audited for what could make the best outrage-bait article? That's quite a black swan event.

William McCaskell wrote and promoted a book in August 2022, in an effort to popularize and justify the sorts of “longtermist” utilitarian views held by (some, increasingly dominant) EA folks. Allegedly this was backed by a multi-million dollar PR budget, which is why it got so much press at the time, and also why so many people were talking about EA philosophies last summer — even before FTX.

I think your response is strange. The EA/longtermist folks have been making a very deliberate and considered effort to promote and popularize their movement. This wasn’t something that “just happened to them.” And FTX blowing up was a major event in the course of that debate, since it starkly illustrated the weaknesses of a moral philosophy that centers numbers and dollars over the kind of traditional ethical judgement practiced by other charitable movements.

This piece, in turn, feels like more of the same promotional effort. Nominally it’s about the author’s kidney donation, but it immediately and prominently shifts to arguing about how EAs are great people who will donate their kidneys to strangers and how unfair the world is to criticize them over castles, which incidentally were the best possible use of money. It’s not subtle or incidental at all, and it felt like I was reading a piece of promotional religious material or something.

Re: My Left Kidney

#189

Post by sadtoot »

sashank_1509 wrote: post #27

This does honestly kind of shock me, it’s respectable that he did something like this for a random person but I could never imagine myself doing it for anyone except close family. I used to think EA was some kooky AI safety Cult but if so many EA folks donate their kidney, my opinion of them has improved far more. They at least have balls!

not meaning to attack you on this point--it's your life and you can do what you want--but why would you only consider being a donor for your family? i'm guessing the reason might be 1) you have some condition and you're worried about your health (in which case you might not be an elligible donor anyway) or 2) you're worried about surgery complications or long-term health impacts. but the impacts to your health are usually much more minor than you expect!

here's an analogy i've used before: if you were walking by a burning building, and you heard a stranger inside saying "help! help!", would you run in and save them? i think a lot of people would say "yes" or at least consider it, despite running into a burning building being a lot riskier than organ donation IMO

Re: My Left Kidney

#190

Post by jagraff »

sulam wrote: post #184
mpreda wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About erythropoietin (EPO), I understand it's a hormone whose amount is regulated by the need for oxygen in the blood (i.e. a feedback loop which regulates the amount of red blood cells to be just what is needed to satisfy the oxygen needs of the body). So EPO is not limited by the ability of the kidneys to produce it (I expect, by a large margin). So one kidney would just as well be able to produce all the EPO you m…

A tour full of competitive cyclists would beg to differ with this analysis.

Cyclists who dope with EPO are raising their levels far beyond what is healthy in order to get their red blood cell count to superhuman levels. It has the side effect of massively raising your risk of stroke
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