From: jeff davis (jrd1415@yahoo.com)
Date: Tue Feb 26 2002 - 14:43:42 MST
Friends,
>From the discussion of the organ
donation/commercialization, I've snipped a couple of
characteristic comments:
"Would it not be more extropian to encourage
trade in human organs?"
"Does it get us generally closer to the type of
world we wish/need to live in? It doesn't look much
like what my goal is. On the one hand it is ghastly
unpleasant and subject to tons of abuse.
If that is so then granting such trade legal status
would legalize a nightmare with serious moral and
health repurcussions."
"There are few organs which can be taken from live
bodies, and enough people die that market forces would
result in demand satisfied by dead peoples organs."
"I cant see a down side to legalizing organ trade.
Your concerns sound vaguely paranoid, but are
unfortunately shared by most people-
making it unlikely that organ trade will occur in
the near future."
----------------------------------
It occurs to me that this entire situation, with its
powerful ethical concerns, intensity of emotion, and
fierce social focus is likely to evaporate rather
abruptly right before our eyes--become moot--, with
the availability of alternatives to salvaged human
organs.
Replacement organs from pigs--
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2002-02/shc-ibi022502.php
could be close. When they become available, it will
mean multiple organ systems in great abundance, with
near zero ethical problems(there'll still be some
religious conflicts and animal rights issues, but
these will pale in comparision to questions relating
to "carving up the dead/poor/clones/embryos").
This will mark a first-generation solution to the
desperate-human-suffering-driven demand for
replacement organs, and will substantially reduce the
social pressure surrounding the issue--take "the heat"
off, as it were. After that breakthrough, I would be
looking for extensions of this technology. Those same
transgenic pigs might then be employed--would
immunocompatibility work both ways do you think?-- as
hosts for the growing of individual personal--ie "your
own tissue"-- replacement parts using stem cell
cloning techniques.
Thence on to nano-organs and other surprises.
-----------------------------
Anyway, my point is, that I think the current
intensity of emotion obscures the imminent calm after
the storm, analogous to the radical change,
improvement, and expansion in surgical practice
brought about by the advent of anesthesia.
Fix the problem. Enhance. Transcend.
Best, Jeff Davis
"Everything's hard till you know how to do it."
Ray Charles
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