Organs...in+process

"Every year the shortage of human organs grows worse." So begins a short supply and demand economic analysis of organ donation from [|The Library of Economics and Liberty]. It's not the sort of sentence one expects to be written with a straight face, earnestly. We expect discussions of shortages to be about nonhuman resources—a shortage of old growth timber, perhaps, or if the shortage is about human resources, then in terms of social roles—a shortage of schoolteachers. Even when we really do mean a shortage of humans, we mean whole humans—so the shortage of women (i.e. wives) in China as the children of the one-child generation grew up. But a "shortage of human organs" does not mean a shortage of people, but of parts of people. That's frankly weird. And gets weirder. Because part of what a "shortage of human organs [that are suitable for donation]" means in part is that there is a shortage of dead people, particularly brain-dead people. Given the figures provided by Mr. Economics & Liberty, even if every brain-dead person became an organ donor, there would still be a "shortage of human organs". So, what should we do? We might legalize euthanasia and design it so that it produced brain-death first; encourage suicidals to sign up; encourage death penalty sentences and then "harvest"... is this callous? Perhaps, but financial incentives alone won't increase the supply sufficiently to satisfy the demand; even if all of the "perfectly acceptable cadaveric organs [that] are wasted" now were to be used, there still wouldn't be enough. The only way to increase the potential supply is to increase the number of brain-dead people. Which is a wicked twisted thing to be hoping for.

"Brain-dead" is itself, a pretty twisted concept. It isn't just 'dead', or not fully 'dead', or not exactly 'dead'... Just the brain's dead. Now, I grant you that if the brain dies, everything else, sans serious medical intervention, dies in short order. But that's true too of hearts, lungs, kidneys, livers... death might take a little longer in some cases, but not so very long. But we don't talk of someone who is "heart-dead". They're in "cardiac arrest" or just plain dead. But the brain can die all by itself. It's the one part of the body that we refuse to disassociate from the person. If the brain is dead, the person is dead, and it doesn't matter what else the associated body is still capable of, because without the brain, it is clearly no longer a person.

Here's a nice pairing of apparently conflicting information about organ donation and race:

From [|U.S. Department of Health and Human Services website on organ donation:]

Some diseases of the kidney, heart, lung, pancreas, and liver are found more frequently in racial and ethnic minority populations than in the general population. For example, African Americans, Asians and Pacific Islanders, and Hispanics are three times more likely than Whites to suffer from end-stage renal disease. Native Americans are four times more likely than Whites to suffer from diabetes. Some of these diseases are best treated through transplantation and others can only be treated through transplantation.

Patients are less likely to reject an organ if it is donated by an individual who is genetically similar. People are usually more genetically similar to others of their own ethnicity than to people of other ethnicities. The more minority donors there are, the greater the likelihood that minority patients will find an organ that matches their tissue type. (From the Myths and Facts section). For more information on minorities and organ donation, visit the web site of the National Minority Organ Tissue Transplant Education Program (not a U.S. Government Web site) at www.mottep.org.

From [|the Mayo Clinic's website:]

Myth. Race plays a role in determining who gets an organ. Reality. The national organ transplant waiting list is colorblind. Among all of the medical data listed on the transplant list for each person waiting, no race information is specified. When a donor organ becomes available, those allocating the organ don't know the race of those waiting for it. Allocation is made according to medical data, the severity of the illness and time spent on the waiting list.

Suitability...