#kidneygate

So, catching up on news and came across kidneygate. If you have the patience, you can take a look at the 10k word long Times Magazine article of fandomwank level reporting. (TIL samsung keyboard includes "fandomwank" as a vocab suggestion when you typo.)

Mostly, I was just reading it for the popcorn entertainment, because I'm a morally weak person who can't resist wankery, but then I happened upon a Slate article promoting kidney donation and encouraging doners to brag about one's altruism.

And that's when I went from entertained to frustrated.

Slate might have had a point three decades ago. But in an era where we have organ cloning techniques and are on the cusp of 3D printing human organs, demanding people to give up their kidney just because one can get by with a single working kidney is unconscionable.

Trying to fix society's problems by demanding healthy people to give up their biological redundancy safeguard is choosing a needlessly dangerous option when the much safer alternatives, such as cloning, are available. Why isn't the article advocating for legalizing organ cloning programs? Why demand human sacrifice when it is no longer our only option?

Again, this attitude of "everyone healthy should donate a kidney and we ought to encourage people to leverage social pressure to achieve the goal" is disgusting. This is the equivalent of "everyone should grow vegetable gardens to solve global warming" - not only is it ineffectual, it's also shifting the burden of fixing societal problems from the government to the individual. Instead of demanding that lawmakers hold the medical industry responsible and demanding institutions to be governed by science instead of religious conservatives who make up hollow ethical dilemmas about cloning, the Slate writer decides to promote the lie of individual altruism as a solution to structural insufficiency.

In addition, the writer also perpetuates the blatant lie that the donation process is risk free. No surgery is risk free. Period. Everytime you undergo anesthesia, your life is on the line. That is the harsh truth of surgery. Doctors are legally and ethically obligated to warn you about the potential risks of anesthesia for a reason. I find it morally nauseating that Slate thinks it acceptable to put healthy people's lives at risk when there are risk free options available to us.

Stop promoting live organ donations and demand your lawmakers to green light organ cloning instead! Make the ethical choice.