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My Left Kidney

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Re: My Left Kidney

#211

Post by mort96 »

sadtoot wrote: post #185
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…

> 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.

Nothing I have said really even touches on the topic that that safety could be impacted by people trying to game the screening process, though it is of course a legitimate concern.

> i just don't see kidney donation as being a significant enough harm to outweigh the harm of the recipient not getting the kidney.

I don't disagree that kidney donation is a net good. The question is what you do with that opinion. You could defend the idea of a "kidney draft", where some random selection of the population gets forced by the state to "donate" one of their kidneys; though I suspect a lot of the proponents of a free organ market would be uncomfortable with that idea, as would I. The difference is that I view financial coercion as just as much of a problem as state coercion.

> if we're worried about people being financially desperate, we should allow organs to be sold and build a stronger social safety net

I agree! If there was a social safety net which reliably kept people out of desperate poverty, I would be less worried about financial incentives.

The safety net needs to come first, however.

Re: My Left Kidney

#212

Post by Suzuran »

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?

Remember, if you can sell it, then a debt collector can force you to sell it. I'd much rather say "People can't sell their organs" than have a future where debt collectors manipulate people into parting out their bodies.

Re: My Left Kidney

#213

Post by ryanbrunner »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #202
ryanbrunner wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're both sort of wrong. Solely symptom management should not be the recommended course of action for anything short of stage 5, and there is a ton you can do to slow or stop progression in the early stages, perhaps even avoiding the need for dialysis / tranplant altogether. But as much as you say kidney disease "has to go", it won't. Reduced kidney function from chronic kidney disease is permanent, and no matter h…

I don't have a diagnosis of kidney disease. I never claimed to.

Fair enough. In whatever your case was, it sounds like you may have had the ability to eliminate the disease / infection / whatever. That's not the case for kidney disease, and while encouraging healthy habits is always a good thing, CKD patients (i.e. the ones who would need kidney transplants) can't just exercise or diet away the disease.

Re: My Left Kidney

#214

Post by sadtoot »

zabzonk wrote: post #9

Wow. Bonkers. Also, prolix. Evolution has equipped us with two kidneys for presumably good reasons. Don't go giving one away unless you really have to.

evolution also programmed us to yawn, yet doctors can't figure out what purpose or benefit it has

Re: My Left Kidney

#215

Post by DoreenMichele »

ryanbrunner wrote: post #210
DoreenMichele wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was officially rejected due to mild childhood OCD. If you take that stated reason at face value, his rant about it is completely reasonable. If their "real reason" is more like your description, perhaps they should have found a way to try to say that.

I know at least for directed organ donation transplant teams will frequently lie - for instance, if a donor backs out, the clinic will default to telling the recipient it isn't a match rather than them backing out. I wonder if there's similar things going on here.

The not PC version of my thoughts is you have to be nuts to want to give away a perfectly good kidney to a random stranger. The system doesn't agree with me and has criteria for who can "reasonably" do that.

My experience is that insanity is essentially rooted in "buying the BS" and actual reality is the best antidote for it.

If they really are concerned for the mental health of donors whose reasoning worries them, they should find a means to effectively express that to them.

The policy you describe is likely a factor here. It's also a form of gaslighting which is an effective means to drive someone insane.

It's not gaslighting or headfuckery to come up with polite explanations for someone changing their mind. It's just a practical matter. But telling someone repeatedly "Get therapy" if* you have misrepresented what you see as mentally wrong is pointless.

* Granted, as someone else pointed out, we are only hearing his version of events and it may not be "The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth."

Re: My Left Kidney

#216

Post by lusus_naturae »

I skimmed over this so I am unsure if this was addressed in the article: what if you donate an organ to an asshole? If they're weak or sickly, there is less chance of them being an asshole. However, a recovered and healthy asshole has relatively greater chance of subjecting the world to themselves.

The above may appear to be a crude (and maybe overly harsh and pessimistic) argument against organ donation, but I struggle with encouraging altruistic because some people suck and don't deserve your kindness. My question is this: does showing kindness to someone who is incapable of it themselves only perpetuate more unkindness? I worry that it does.

Re: My Left Kidney

#217

Post by Suzuran »

mort96 wrote: post #211
sadtoot wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. Nothing I have said really even touches on the topic that that safety could be impacted by people trying to game the screening process, though it is of course a legitimate concern. > i just don't see kidney donation as being a significant eno…

The screening isn't just for safety, it's for biological compatibility with the recipient - a mismatched organ will not function and will be destroyed by the recipient's (even suppressed) immune system. It's worse than just failing, you damaged the recipient and you wasted an organ that could have gone to a proper match. When I received my kidney transplant I had to acknowledge a risk of contracting an undetected bloodborne illness from the (deceased) donor's history of drug usage. If the primary concern driving screening was simply safety the organ would not have been considered available. The primary concern is compatibility. Other resulting conditions can be managed afterward. The risk of me dying as a result of the aforementioned undetected bloodborne illness was some tiny fraction of a percent - The risk of me dying on extended dialysis is one hundred percent.

Re: My Left Kidney

#218

Post by woodruffw »

TheDong wrote: post #182
woodruffw wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

Nobody has said this, as far as I can tell. My claim was that there were other things about his situation that might suggest to the bureaucrats in question that he was a risky donor. I don’t think Scott gave a kidney so that he could write a blog post about it.

Re: My Left Kidney

#219

Post by bvaldivielso »

lusus_naturae wrote: post #216

I skimmed over this so I am unsure if this was addressed in the article: what if you donate an organ to an asshole? If they're weak or sickly, there is less chance of them being an asshole. However, a recovered and healthy asshole has relatively greater chance of subjecting the world to themselves. The above may appear to be a crude (and maybe overly harsh and pessimistic) argument against organ donation, but I strug…

Do you think the average kindness of a person is positive? Or negative? If positive, and not knowing who your kidney is going to, donating a kidney is positive in expectation

Re: My Left Kidney

#220

Post by Suzuran »

ryanbrunner wrote: post #199
caust1c wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just imagining a surgery gone sideways situation and they just decide to trade the one still in with the one they just took out. (Not even sure this is an option, orientation and all, just imaging)

Transplanted kidneys generally go lower in your belly than your "native" kidneys and they aren't swapped, the original kidneys are left in and they add another. Anyone who's had a transplant most likely has 3 or even 4 kidneys inside them.

Mine is located on my right side just above the midline of my pelvis.
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