This past summer, my late-20s brother was killed when he was hit by a car while riding his bike. He was an organ donor, and because his heart never stopped beating, his organs (including his heart) went to six or seven other people.
But don't just check your organ donor status, tell the people you love that you're an organ donor. It was completely by chance that we found out that my brother was one just a few days before the accident, and we never found his wallet or his driver's licence, so we probably wouldn't have known his wishes otherwise.
I’ll never know who her skin went on to help, but I know she’d be overjoyed to know she made another final contribution to science.
Since the topic of organ donation came up, I thought of asking this question. This is a real incident. I am not making this up. I met a learned priest. Both I and the priest are hindus. He argued that since God gave us our body and organs at birth, we need to give it back to God the body and all the organs at death. I don't agree with the priests argument. It is just that I am not that smart and don't know how to counter that argument. I am sure there are hindu readers in HN community. Any thoughts on this?
The Vedas, which are considered sacrosanct in all surviving sects of theistic Hinduism. There were once atheist sects like the Ajivikas and the Charvakas, but they went out of fashion a long time ago.
The verses in the Vedic texts can be classified in many different ways. For instance, “Bheda Stutis” and “Abheda Stutis” in the Upanishads (which essentially are Dualist and Monist verses). The classification that I’m interested in touching upon here is the distinction between Karma-kanda and the Jnana-kanda (which translate to procedural canon and the theoretical canon). The procedural part mostly deals with the details on rituals and worship (one bit that I vividly remember is the part on the rituals of animal sacrifice, which might come as a bit of a surprise). The theoretical part deals with the questions around the true nature of Brahman (the ultimate god) and Atman (the individual soul). Hindu priests usually specialise in the former (the part involving rituals) rather than the latter. I wouldn’t trust a lone Hindu priest’s opinion on such doctrinal matters. :)
The Vedic doctrine on your question is fairly unambiguous (which is quite rare for anything in the Vedas). The soul (aka the Atman) always takes precedence. The body is considered to be a mere shell in which the soul temporarily resides. Thinking that the body and the soul to be inextricably linked to the body is considered a common fallacy which even has a Sanskrit term for it (Dehatma bhranti). The body (Deha) is considered temporary and dispensable and the soul (Atman), eternal. What happens to the body after death is merely a procedural implementation detail and will not affect your chances at the lottery to attain Moksha. :)
The priest you spoke to probably is confounding the cremation rituals with the idea of sacrifice (aka Bali).
1. You could argue back to the priest that your organ donation is going to save lives which God would appreciate anyway and have your way :D
2. More broadly, one of the lessons of history [0] is that what begins as a practical way to do something becomes codified into religion because it's far more efficient to get the message across generations. I'd like to believe that burning the body (as many Hindus do) is one such [ Not burning the body may have caused infections and what not in tribal settlements long long ago ] . This being the case, organ donation is a safe way, too. If you're the more scientific kind, you can use this to further convince yourself to donate the body. I know I would use both 1&2 :)
[0] I read about this when researching how Halal and some other practises came about. I will try to dig up the reference but it was ages ago :(
Hinduism has no central doctrine, so while this particular priest may hold a view on organ donation (or lack thereof), there will be others who may encourage it. As an example - Lord Ganesha's head is "donated" from an elephant. The concept of organ reuse isn't new. There just wasn't the technology to deal with it in the past.
I may not be as learned as the priest you know. But I have yet to find any of the priests I know tell me organ donation goes against any scripture.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/hinduism/hinduethic...
https://www.organdonation.nhs.uk/helping-you-to-decide/your-...
(This is just from a quick Google search)
So here's a (silly) attempt to address the priest's argument directly: what if you lose a part of your body long before your death? Is that okay? If yes, returning an organ a couple decades later than planned shouldn't be that big a problem, no?
BTW, in my religion, saying "I am not that smart and don't know how to..." is a sin :p
Your comment gave me pause because it reminded me that it is opt-in not opt-out. It is an election cycle, I wonder if we could convince one of the candidates to switch us to opt-out rather than opt-in for organ donation.
> Your comment gave me pause because it reminded me that it is opt-in not opt-out. It is an election cycle, I wonder if we could convince one of the candidates to switch us to opt-out rather than opt-in for organ donation.
While I am personally an organ donor, I don't believe the state should be the defacto owner of my organs post mortem.
How it works is a form to do some other thing (for example, get a driving license) has a checkbox to donate and one to not donate, and the form is rejected as incomplete if you don't choose one or the other.
This of course means you don't have to apply a default to those people, because they've made an explicit choice already.
Of course, you still have to work out what you'll do with people who haven't filled out the form - like the newborn baby mentioned at the start of this thread.
It could be opt-in or opt-out for everyone else. You don't have to solve the problem perfectly to make it better than it is today.
For younger, parents can choose. If somebody wants to argue about teens, they can decide themselves / be not-decided by their choice until reaching adulthood.
(the Google searches it took me to find that article surely put me on some watch lists...)
If you don't believe the state should be the defacto owner of your organs (I'd argue it's the recipient that ultimately ends up owning them, but whatever), then you can opt out.
It’s worth noting though that the process of saying yes and sorting that all out was in fact incredibly healing and cathartic for me. I wouldn’t necessarily think it’s a bad thing for grieving families to be involved in.
I think emotionally I agree with you, but rationally I just cannot explain it.
The second part seems to mean that only certain types of nonprofits can accept organs. From there they may or may not be able to profit off of the sale of the organ but instead the services to transport and maintain it. Then at a certain point, you've turned penises into lip filler, and then you can sell the lip filler (at a huge profit).
I have no problems with my organs being used to help others, either as direct spare parts for others, or for medical research.
But I'd take issue with (well, I'd be dead, so I could no longer take issue, but you catch my drift) my organs being used for just about any other type of research, since that could include research into better ways of killing one another, which I would consider a "bad thing".
Ahh you can't leave us hanging with just that. Can you elaborate more?
That said I don't agree with forcing people to something they don't want to and I know that there are at least a couple of religions out there that forbid cutting up the body after death.
The 'forced choice' option (in one of the other comments) is a really good one, IMHO
It is hard to argue both that not donating one's organs would be a strongly held religious belief, and that someone would not care about it enough to communicate that desire by just opting out.
Thankful that we both got a second chance this year!
Great thanksgiving it is - Tearing up over here at my desk...
I am very thankful my Kidney donor and to all the teams that support me post and pre transplant.
[0]: https://www.chron.com/news/health/article/Some-donated-tissu...
- hospitals
- medicine
- glasses / other similar implements
- any other human altering measures?
We closed the door on natural evolution a long time ago. Most of us are already cyborgs with our phones and computers. Any future evolution will be done by us (I.e. more advanced cyborgs cyborgs / genetic modification).
The much anticipated collapse will apply those sort of rules soon enough anyways.
It's not helpful to still be thinking in such antiquated ways like evolution through the fittest survivors. Humans have not done that for quite a long time, in pretty much every facet of our society you can find that.
As I said, genetic modification and cyber augmentation will be how we evolve moving forward. Advances in medicine has (and will) make worrying about evolution a headscratcher.
> Since organ donation is not saving people,
[Citation Needed]. I would imagine there's many cases, such as accidents, where someone would need an organ and then be perfectly fine afterwards.
Homo Sapiens has evolved more in the last 50,000 years, than in the 1M before that. Because of civilization.
My daughter contracted Coxsackie B enterovirus at 2 weeks old, and it scarred her left ventricle beyond repair. Her donor has given her a second chance. Another family had to make a heartbreaking choice at a devastating moment, and they chose to give life to my daughter and probably several other gravely ill infants.
Check your organ donor status please. Happy Thanksgiving.