Should they be kept alive so that we may harvest their organs should the need arise? — NOS4A2

People who have been declared dead are already circulated with oxygen so their organs are recoverable in a good state. In that respect, the distinction between organ donation (not just opt out) and WGBD is the duration of the circulatory period. It could be true that it's morally wrong to circulate oxygen around the donor's body for the period of a pregnancy, but not for organ donation, but it would need arguing.

The article puts it like this:

Prolonging ventilation and somatic survival in brain-dead patients is undoubtedly a disturbing prospect. WBGD involves treating the patient’s dead body as a means to an end, rather than as an end in itself. The patient moves from being the focus of medical concern, to being a repository of tissues that can be used to benefit others. The prolongation of the ventilation period exacerbates our awareness of this. Yet this is already a part of our organ donation process. Organ donors are almost invariably patients who are already being ventilated, as part of their medical treatment. If the patient is deemed to be a suitable organ donor, ventilation will be continued along with other interventions to ensure that the organs will be maintained for transplant in optimal condition. Thus, we already prolong ventilation in order to facilitate organ donation.

WBGD would involve extending this prolongation considerably further. But ventilating someone for two days, two weeks, or two years makes little difference except insofar as it forces us to acknowledge and recognise what we are doing before we hasten on to the next stage. The justification for prolonging somatic survival in conventional organ donation is primarily the benefits that are expected to derive for others, but also the idea that if someone wants to donate their organs, it may be reasonable to take the steps to preserve the organs even when this is no longer directly in the patient’s medical best interests. The same criteria apply to WBGD; the period of prolongation is further extended, but the means and justification are the same.

Edit: a possibility I'd not considered here is that braindead bodies in cannot be prevented from decomposing before gestation completes, given current medical knowledge. This is another point in favour of the scenario just being a sci fi hypothetical.

So there is the added question of: should these brain-dead people be kept alive, used as incubators, so that someone else may become a mother? — NOS4A2

No.

Should they be kept alive so that we may harvest their organs should the need arise? — NOS4A2

That's why I have stuck to the organ issue. I have a strong aversion to suspending the animation of brain-dead people in any situation (but for a few special exceptions: to delay death so that a distant loved one can say good-bye; to bring her own viable foetus to term; to preserve expressly donated organs in optimal condition for transplant.)
But I admit here: my objection to reproductive use of the undead is aesthetic and practical, rather than eithcal.

According to same laws the efforts and expense needs to be taken by the goods and money he or she left in the inheritance. If these are not sufficient, it needs to be paid by the goods of the successors and ultimately, public funds if the state is held accountable. — javi2541997

Well, that law needs changing. It's wrong. It's as if the state barged in, wrecked a dead guy's house, and then charged the survivors for rubble removal. If they take the benefit, they should absorb the cost.

If they take the benefit, they should absorb the cost. — Vera Mont

I am agree, the state should absorb the costs of they take the benefit but here we have another dilemma because the state acts with public profits thanks to the taxes so those costs are already paid by the contributors. I mean, the state works thanks to our rents and tax payers, it is not particular neither a private corporation. The dilemma could be if the state should or not take those benefits the public administration when is based on public resources.

The dilemma could be if the state should or not take those benefits the public administration when is based on public resources. — javi2541997

It's taking the bodies for the public's use. Just as it would have to pay market value when it appropriates private lands to make a park or sport stadium. Public benefit - public cost. Presumably, too, the state benefits from the saved patients' curtailed dependence on the health care system, prolonged productivity and tax-paying life.

The process for qualifying a person for donation takes time. Tests have to be run, a pulmonologist needs to do a bronchoscopy if the lungs are candidates, probably an echocardiogram for the heart, and so on.

If a victim of a motor vehicle accident comes into an emergency department and there's no time to get consent before the patient dies, there's no time to test the organs to make sure they're not going to make life worse for the recipient.

In other words, if you have time to qualify them, you have time to get consent, usually. It would be rare that you don't.

Ultimately, morality is a matter of public opinion and it doesn't have to be logical.

What bothers me about this discussion is that it sounds characteristic of the arrogance of the NIH. They have a history of ignoring morality, as when large numbers of women were denied epidurals for childbirth based on some idiot's opinion that it's not necessary, or the case where they denied transport of a child to the US for heart surgery because some idiot thought the patient was too sick to travel. The patient subsequently died.

For all it's faults, that's one good thing about the American system. Between competition between hospitals and the courts, providers are very attuned to what society thinks is right.

To me, organ donation is morally wrong if the donor does not consent. The same is true of human incubators, which is its own kind of organ donation. What if the guy wakes up? It’s no doubt rare but people have been declared brain-dead and nonetheless made full recoveries.

So I find the opt-out program is morally wrong and unjust. The utilitarian argument for “presumed consent”, in this case using human beings as incubators without their consent, whether for organs or children, requires too much faith in human infallibility and authority for me to be comfortable with. It illegitimately considers human beings as state property. The acquisition of the human being as property was unjust. For these reasons I wouldn’t make it past the first premise.

But I admit here: my objection to reproductive use of the undead is aesthetic and practical, rather than eithcal. — Vera Mont

My most obvious objection to it would be that we have no idea what the consequences are for the child of being gestated in what is essentially a corpse, as opposed to in a living, loving, breathing mother.

A dead person has no 'interests'. — Vera Mont

What happens to one's corpse? It's either buried/cremated and in both cases, perfectly working organs are destroyed when they could actually save lives. I say we harvest organs of dead people. Why would they mind at all? — Agent Smith

I suppose we might as well have an opt-out system for having one's dead body used as a high-quality sex doll for necrophiliacs. Who would pass up on such an amazing opportunity to make others happy after their death?

There was a very good episode of the TV series Boston Legal, wherein a widow donated her husband's body to a teaching museum https://www.bu.edu/articles/2019/to-do-today-see-inside-the-human-body-at-the-museum-of-sciences-body-worlds-exhibit/ and the daughter took possession, so she could bury it.

You don't have to be dead for someone to argue that there is some way you didn't consent to that you could serve a greater good. With the undead incubators, we're awfully close to a line we really should not cross.

A dead person has no 'interests'. — Vera Mont

Technically incorrect. A decedent's estate is just that. Which begs the question, the dead body should belong to the decedent's estate automatically, along with their assets (property and financial accounts) and income.

There was a very good episode of the TV series Boston Legal, wherein a widow donated her husband's body to a teaching museum https://www.bu.edu/articles/2019/to-do-today-see-inside-the-human-body-at-the-museum-of-sciences-body-worlds-exhibit/ and the daughter took possession, so she could bury it. — Vera Mont

Interesting.

But what I see is a crime committed by the daughter: Alan represents two clients, a woman who stole her late father's body from a museum.
If the widow already donated the corpse to the museum for scientific research, then the museum is now the legitimate "owner" of the corpse. The daughter is not legally covered to ask for the body of her father. Why she didn't opposed against the donation in the first place?

What happens to one's corpse? It's either buried/cremated and in both cases, perfectly working organs are destroyed when they could actually save lives. I say we harvest organs of dead people. Why would they mind at all?
— Agent Smith

I suppose we might as well have an opt-out system for having one's dead body used as a high-quality sex doll for necrophiliacs. Who would pass up on such an amazing opportunity to make others happy after their death? — Tzeentch

Beware of the slippery slope fallacy mon ami.

Organ harvesting is ok, corpse as a sex doll not ok. I've told my family that I know a coupla guys who'd like nothing more than to dance on me grave. I've got to save up ... for refreshments for the occasion. I wonder what their favorite drinks are. :chin: God bless their souls! :smile:

So I find the opt-out program is morally wrong and unjust. The utilitarian argument for “presumed consent”, in this case using human beings as incubators without their consent, whether for organs or children, requires too much faith in human infallibility and authority for me to be comfortable with. It illegitimately considers human beings as state property. The acquisition of the human being as property was unjust. For these reasons I wouldn’t make it past the first premise. — NOS4A2

Is there any way, for you, that the amount of good done by the opt out organ donation program is worth the fallible way consent is established in it?

[dead men have no 'interests' to protect]

Technically incorrect. A decedent's estate is just that. — L'éléphant

I covered property and wills. The body itself, however, is no longer a person whose interest the courts can protect. The body is property; part of the estate, over which the court has power to decide jurisdiction.

the dead body should belong to the decedent's estate automatically, along with their assets (property and financial accounts) and income. — L'éléphant

Just so.

His interests are not under consideration, unless he made a legally binding will. The law does provide for a dead person's property to be disposed according to his will. In the absence of a written will, the state has the right to apportion whatever property is not legally claimed by an heir. If there are no heirs, the state becomes the beneficiary.
It seems to me the same rule applies to dead bodies.
The matter of ownership is decided between the heirs and the state. If there is no legal claim to the remains, the state can take possession. — Vera Mont

If the widow already donated the corpse to the museum for scientific research, then the museum is now the legitimate "owner" of the corpse. The daughter is not legally covered to ask for the body of her father. Why she didn't opposed against the donation in the first place? — javi2541997

Because she didn't know what he was being donated for. She assumed it was medical research, which would have been all right. He had been a wasteful drunk: his corpse was displayed with its degenerating organs exposed and a bottle in his hand. The wife donated his body to this museum as revenge. When the daughter found out, she had petitioned for its removal from the exhibit and been refused. She stole it as a desperate last resort, to save her father from public humiliation.
That is the crux of the story. It centers on the interest of the dead man; not so much his body as his reputation. The arguments were over what he would have wanted, in the absence of written instruction.

I've been thinking about this and I've changed my mind. I have no problem with taking organs without active approval as long as the policy is well publicized and families are given a chance to change their minds if that's possible. I don't think that should be true of a gestational donation. I'm leaning in the direction of banning those altogether. When I die, take whatever you want and burn the rest. But the idea of my body sitting there for nine months with pumps and feeding tubes gives me an upset stomach. Yes, I know it couldn't happen to me, notwithstanding the paper's author's science fictional male pregnancy fantasy.

That started me thinking. Keeping a body alive for nine months would very expensive. If it weren't covered by insurance, only rich people could do it. Probably very rich people. In my state, Massachusetts, it is a requirement that insurance plans cover fertility treatments, including in vitro fertilization, but surrogacy is not covered. I certainly wouldn't want insurance plans to be required to pay for this type of "treatment."

That started me thinking. Keeping a body alive for nine months would very expensive. If it weren't covered by insurance, only rich people could do it. — T Clark

And if a very rich person invested in a whole medical facility dedicated to artificially sustaining human incubators for rent, they could get very much richer. And no orphans from lower classes will be adopted into a better shot life.
That is very much at the center of my problem with the idea of harvesting.
Buy a compatible body - from the owner, while he yet occupies it and can sign a legal will, or the opportunist heirs with power of attorney. Keep it in suspended animation for whenever you need parts. But what if he won't die young enough for his parts to be useful to an old billionnaire? Might be hurried along with a serendipitous accidental blow to the head....

But the idea of my body sitting there for nine months with pumps and feeding tubes gives me an upset stomach. — T Clark

Aye. It's a sickening and horrifying idea. Though neither of those things mean it's wrong.

That started me thinking. Keeping a body alive for nine months would very expensive. If it weren't covered by insurance, only rich people could do it. Probably very rich people. In my state, Massachusetts, it is a requirement that insurance plans cover fertility treatments, including in vitro fertilization, but surrogacy is not covered. I certainly wouldn't want insurance plans to be required to pay for this type of "treatment." — T Clark

I generally agree. And also in the abstract. The proposal has so many implementation problems it's quite impossible to implement, or unethical for what you would need to do to get it doing. Though, interestingly to me, those aren't the reasons I expected to reject the argument on. I was expecting to reject it on the basis of autonomy violation, going in, but that way has so many assumptions and branching paths of argument it's like getting lost in an alien world.

This amounts to denying this premise:

( 11 ) Harms to the living derive from the denial of bodily autonomy.

And its downstream influences - not all the harms to the living derive from the denial of bodily autonomy, implementation details would disrupt funerals, have significant costs, be difficult to maintain, the repugnancy of the idea could very well impede regular organ harvesting and so on.

It also fails to consider aspects of the procedure which would decrease the expected utility: eg, the body decaying after brain death, even when maintained, also makes it very unlikely the body could fully gestate.

Ultimately perhaps the referenced argument by Ber is stronger, but likely to be even more repugnant - the donor body isn't dead, it's in a persistent vegetative state.

Aye. It's a sickening and horrifying idea. Though neither of those things mean it's wrong. — fdrake

Ultimately perhaps the referenced argument by Ber is stronger, but likely to be even more repugnant - the donor body isn't dead, it's in a persistent vegetative state. — fdrake

As I think about it more, what makes it sickening to me is also why I think it's, if not wrong, at least wrongheaded. Say what you will, my body is me. All those bodies in a persistent vegetative state are still people. I think it hurts us to act as if that isn't true. Treating people as means to an end devalues them individually and people in general. I don't get that same feeling from organ donation.

So. These are people. Show them respect. Don't use them. If that seems idealistic or romantic, I'm ok with that.

Even if they are brain dead? Still a person?

Treating people as means to an end devalues them individually and people in general. I don't get that same feeling from organ donation. — T Clark

Aye! I think that's what makes the argument particularly uncomfortable. It invites asking why is one so bad when the other isn't. Give it a go! Eg; why is WBGD devaluing people by treating them as a means to an end, but organ donation isn't?

I think its pretty obviously due to squeamishness, not logic. Its really the same thing, ghoulish perhaps but not immoral. Its a carcass, an empty shell. In fact one could argue the merits of its morality, if one thinks of recycling and not being wasteful as moral imperatives.

Even if they are brain dead? Still a person? — DingoJones

What is considered a person is something that changes over time. Historically, foreign or primitive people have sometimes been considered less worthy of personhood than others. More recently, the idea of personhood has sometimes been stretched to include non-human animals. As I see it, we get to choose what we consider human. For me, people in a persistent vegetative state are still human. I think it's best for all of us if we see things that way unless there are vitally important reasons not to. I don't see providing surrogates for gestating babies as vitally important.

Even if they are brain dead? Still a person? — DingoJones

To their family and friends, yes. The law will have to make its new rule according to constitution and precedent: whatever laws applied to the desecration of dead bodies presumably still applies to the brain-dead, but some new provision has to be made for newly available uses for the undead. If there has to be new legislation, I suppose it'll be up to the usual 38% of voters; if it's decided in legal actions, it'll eventually get kicked up the the supreme court.
It doesn't affect a very large portion of the population, but the publicity might motivate many more to make written disposition regarding their mortal remains.

Human and person are not interchangeable, are you wanting to say the braindead are human or persons? I would say they obviously human, but not a person.
What do you mean “we get to decide what we consider human”? What merit does such a decision have? How do you justify that statement?

To their family and friends, yes. — Vera Mont

That doesnt mean that they are. That is a sentimental illusion people might use for comfort, but does not form an actual basis to claim anything. In what way would they be a person if braindead? What possible definition of “person” could you be using here that includes a biological entity with no mind in it?

why is WBGD devaluing people by treating them as a means to an end, but organ donation isn't? — fdrake

The quick answer is because it feels that way to me. So what's the longer, more considered answer?....I guess the question is why do I feel that way. I guess it's because the person looks just like a normal person who is asleep, unconscious, or comatose. The look like a person. They breath. Their heart beats. I think devaluing their humanity devalues all the rest of ours too, which is a dangerous thing for a society to do except, as I said, for something vitally important.

Human and person are not interchangeable, are you wanting to say the braindead are human or persons? I would say they obviously human, but not a person. — DingoJones

I understand the distinction you are making between human and person. I meant to say "person" in the same sense you are using it. You and I disagree about whether or not people in a vegetative state are people. That's a matter of value, not fact.

That doesnt mean that they are. That is a sentimental illusion people might use for comfort, but does not form an actual basis to claim anything. — DingoJones

Does when they're voting, legislating or trying civil cases.

What possible definition of “person” could you be using here that includes a biological entity with no mind in it? — DingoJones

It doesn't matter. I have already classified them as property, to be disposed like the rest of theat dead person's estate - whether according to their own explicit instructions, or the relative's with power of attorney, or, if unclaimed, the state.
Organ transplants keep other people alive; so would cheap meat. And yet most people would not allow their stone-cold-dead - let alone warm, brain-dead - relatives to be chopped up, packaged and sold in a supermarket.
Most human people are less concerned with objective definitions than with their sentiments. If most people want the bodies of their loved ones used in certain ways, and not in other ways,
that is how the government must decide.

I understand the distinction you are making between human and person. I meant to say "person" in the same sense you are using it. You and I disagree about whether or not people in a vegetative state are people. That's a matter of value, not fact. — T Clark

Maybe. How do you define “person”?