In the rush to harvest body parts, death investigations have been upended • Hacker News Board

Re: In the rush to harvest body parts, death investigations have been upended

#41

Post by lotsofpulp » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 5:35 PM UTC

nicoburns wrote: post #19

xwdv wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s terrifying about it? That it shatters your previous understanding of the industry or that it implies some medical dystopia? Would you prefer to instead called it a terrifyingly rational view?

Here in the UK healthcare is seen as a right. Hospitals and recipients of organs don't pay for them, and nobody is making money off of donated bodies. The idea that access to life-saving treatment is based on ability to pay, and that there are corporations making profit at the expense of people's health and well-being is pretty terrifying to me. There's nothing rational about such a system.

Ability to pay dictates all aspects of life. Whether the individual pays or their country, at the end, no one works for free.

That is why poor people in poorer countries than the U.K. don’t have access to life saving treatments. I’m sure even poor people in the U.K. don’t have access to the same care that rich people do.

Re: In the rush to harvest body parts, death investigations have been upended

#42

Post by dreamcompiler » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 5:37 PM UTC

Call me naive but I was unaware that there were companies benefiting from harvesting my organs. I signed up to help people in need, not to help corporations. Especially corporations with a too-cozy relationship with the coroner's office. I'm revoking my organ donor status until this changes.

Re: In the rush to harvest body parts, death investigations have been upended

#43

Post by bostik » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 5:54 PM UTC

frankharv wrote: post #23

The exemption for celebrities is especially troublesome. Who determines if you are a celebrity or media interest. What if a celebrity had an organ donor citation on their drivers license. Do they still exempt them? I might remove my organ donation status after reading this. It is a distortion of what I assumed occurred. It would have been helpful to list the states where this is allowed. "California and many other st…

> The exemption for celebrities is especially troublesome.

When I saw that one, it became clear the companies involved in this know they are operating on shaky ground.

There is a perfectly valid concern of rich/eccentric/stalky people paying a lot of money to be fitted with bodyparts of their idol. I get that.

But even then the primary motivator can only be pre-emptive avoidance of PR backlash. Harvesting cadavers for big profits feels creepy enough. But just imagine the media storm if a celebrity's family goes on national TV, complaining how their plans for open-coffin funeral were ruined because the national treasure's body had been taken apart and sold for very high-value scrap. Possibly (and quite literally) even before the corpse had got cold.

Optics are important. Checks the price of cornea.

Re: In the rush to harvest body parts, death investigations have been upended

#44

Post by sushid » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 6:06 PM UTC

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #38

xwdv wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How we treat the dead has a profound effect on those that are still living. If we just ground up your loved ones on death and turned them into fertilizer or corn feed for cows you might have a very dim view about life. Funerals aren’t for the dead, they are for the living.

Actually, I think I would choose to be ground up for fertilizer if I had that option.

There are burial options where they plant a tree (non fruit bearing) on top of your body if you really want to opt for something like that.

Re: In the rush to harvest body parts, death investigations have been upended

#45

Post by silencio » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 6:07 PM UTC

For those of you in CA similarly disturbed by this story, a side link in this story talks about how to put limitations on your organ donor status. I did not know this was an option.

I don't know how helpful this will be - for example, there's an option to restrict donations to only non-profits, but OneLegacy (from the story) is one of the four nonprofits in CA that procure organs and runs the registry.

There's also limitations per organ/tissue option, and for research. Also for "life-saving and reconstructive purposes" only.

https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/about/donatelife/do...

Re: In the rush to harvest body parts, death investigations have been upended

#46

Post by radu_floricica » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 6:10 PM UTC

Umm... good? Didn't see anything wrong in the article. If people make money in the process it means it everything goes smoothly.

Also, I'm pretty sure it confused costs with prices. You may pay $x for medical grade skin prepped for the operating theatre. It doesn't mean the same skin still attached to a dead body is worth $x. It's like going to a restaurant and trying to pay for 1% of a cow's market value. You want to pay that money, better be ready to kill, cut and cook a cow.

Re: In the rush to harvest body parts, death investigations have been upended

#47

Post by eth0up » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 6:19 PM UTC

silencio wrote: post #45

For those of you in CA similarly disturbed by this story, a side link in this story talks about how to put limitations on your organ donor status. I did not know this was an option. I don't know how helpful this will be - for example, there's an option to restrict donations to only non-profits, but OneLegacy (from the story) is one of the four nonprofits in CA that procure organs and runs the registry. There's also l…

+1

Good work! This is important information and I hope it stays at the top of the comments. I'll be looking for a FL version.

Edit note: With privacy and security in mind, I'm not 100% sure how comfortable I am with enrollment and modification ability thereof occurring directly through the internet.

Re: In the rush to harvest body parts, death investigations have been upended

#48

Post by the_pwner224 » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 6:20 PM UTC

radu_floricica wrote: post #46

Umm... good? Didn't see anything wrong in the article. If people make money in the process it means it everything goes smoothly. Also, I'm pretty sure it confused costs with prices. You may pay $x for medical grade skin prepped for the operating theatre. It doesn't mean the same skin still attached to a dead body is worth $x. It's like going to a restaurant and trying to pay for 1% of a cow's market value. You want t…

When you donate blood to an organization like the American Red Cross, they sell that blood for around $200 per bag. But, they have to hire qualified and well-trained people and set up facilities with medical equipment to collect your blood. From the research I've done, they don't seem to be making much money off of your blood - it's reasonable for them to sell the blood to hospitals, otherwise blood supplies would be extremely limited.

This does not seem the same. It seems like companies are running around sending people to harvest as much tissue as fast as possible because they make tons of money. Note that the picture in the article only lists prices of skin, cornea, tendons, etc. That is probably because it is against US law to buy/sell actual organs like a heart or a kidney. But these companies are clearly making a profit on everything else if they're so obsessed with getting all the tissues they can, even at the cost of murder investigations.

The Red Cross marketing team calls me to get me to try to sign up for more blood donations. But they don't lobby the government for laws that hook them into the coroners and morgues so they can harvest all the blood the second that someone dies.

Re: In the rush to harvest body parts, death investigations have been upended

#49

Post by silencio » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 6:28 PM UTC

eth0up wrote: post #47

silencio wrote: post #45

For those of you in CA similarly disturbed by this story, a side link in this story talks about how to put limitations on your organ donor status. I did not know this was an option. I don't know how helpful this will be - for example, there's an option to restrict donations to only non-profits, but OneLegacy (from the story) is one of the four nonprofits in CA that procure organs and runs the registry. There's also l…

+1 Good work! This is important information and I hope it stays at the top of the comments. I'll be looking for a FL version. Edit note: With privacy and security in mind, I'm not 100% sure how comfortable I am with enrollment and modification ability thereof occurring directly through the internet.

Short of saying no to heart valve/skin/bone donations, I find it unclear how this will play out in practice though. Like, OneLegacy is a nonprofit so if I select the nonprofit-only box, what happens? Or, how do you determine that a heart valve donation isn't life-saving?

This is really frustrating to me, even as my dad is on a transplant waiting list. The Donate Life page does give me an idea though: I can specify directed donations through an advance healthcare directive. I'm pretty tempted to leave my kidneys to my father and then find a way to explicitly donate my body to an organization that won't leave me with as many questions as these organ procurement nonprofits do.

Re: In the rush to harvest body parts, death investigations have been upended

#50

Post by the_pwner224 » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 6:40 PM UTC

silencio wrote: post #49

eth0up wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 Good work! This is important information and I hope it stays at the top of the comments. I'll be looking for a FL version. Edit note: With privacy and security in mind, I'm not 100% sure how comfortable I am with enrollment and modification ability thereof occurring directly through the internet.

Short of saying no to heart valve/skin/bone donations, I find it unclear how this will play out in practice though. Like, OneLegacy is a nonprofit so if I select the nonprofit-only box, what happens? Or, how do you determine that a heart valve donation isn't life-saving? This is really frustrating to me, even as my dad is on a transplant waiting list. The Donate Life page does give me an idea though: I can specify di…

From the research I did as an Illinois resident: Your body is divided into organs (heart, kidneys, liver, etc.) and tissues (skin, cornea, tendons, etc.). Organs are the real life-saving donations and they must be transplanted fresh within a few hours of death. Tissues like skin and bones get ground up/processed and sold - occasionally for really great purposes like helping burn victims or people with torn ligaments/tendons or cornea transplants, but also for things like making penises & lips bigger. Dunno where heart valves fit into this... maybe the entire heart is an organ but if they cut it up and only take the valves those count as tissues?

The chart in the article with prices of body parts only lists tissues - probably because it is illegal in the US to buy/sell organs; organs go to a match through the central first-come-first-serve registry. It does mention instances of organs also being harvested and the negative externalities of that, but at least those organs had a large effect on someone else's life. The same often can't be said about tissues.

I have taken myself off of the state's 'organ donor' list, which is actually for both organs and tissues. IL also seems to have a harvesting racket like CA; there are two harvesting ('procurement') organizations that have computerized access to morgues and coroners. I'm going to find a way to specify that I only want organs to be donated, and perhaps tissues but only to an organization that I trust.