Schwarzenegger, Jobs attend kidney registry ceremony
updated 02:00 am EDT, Thu October 7, 2010
New law pushed through with help from Apple CEO
Inspired in part by Apple CEO Steve Jobs' own saga of requiring a liver transplant to save his life after complications from pancreatic cancer, California Governor Arnold Scharzenegger yesterday signed legislation setting up the US's first national kidney donor registry for living donors.
The legislation, authored by state senator Ellen Alquist, makes the voluntary option to donate a kidney an choice people can approve when acquiring or renewing their driver's licenses, as they already do for post-mortem organ donation. It would also requires private employers to allow workers to take paid time off to make bone marrow or organ donations.
A webcast of the event shows a still-thin Jobs making very brief remarks, telling the crowd that "As a transplant recipient, I know how precious this gift of life is,” and thanking Alquist and others who voted for the legislation.
Schwarzenegger gave Jobs credit for helping to move the legislation through, noting that Jobs brought to the governor's attention the fact that European countries such as Spain automatically put everyone on an organ-donor list unless they opt out, greatly increasing the supply of post-mortem organs and reducing wait times for patients who need them. This approach is not allowed in the US, said Schwarzenegger, but the registry's ability to match living donors and patients is "the next best thing."
The governor said he believed the registry would increase the number of Californians who donate kidneys while still alive, and hoped it would inspire other states to enact similar legislation.
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Jul 2006
Spooky idea, nasty results
This is worth commenting on: "noting that Jobs brought to the governor's attention the fact that European countries such as Spain automatically put everyone on an organ-donor list unless they opt out, greatly increasing the supply of post-mortem organs..."
Control freaks like this sort of policy. The idea that ordinary people should have real choices is simply foreign to their way of thinking. A chosen few, a superior elite, make the decisions for everyone. If we disagree, then we have to make a special effort to avoid their impositions. We have to work to avoid their agendas. Spain, incidentally, has a long history of that. In fact, Spain doesn't have a history of doing anything else.
I happened to be an organ donor, but I distrust a system that forces me in unless I take the trouble to opt out. And a forced opt-in is only the first stage. It'd be followed by measures to keep people from being aware that a choice is being made for them and eventually by a system that aggressively terminates life support for some people in order to have enough organs to for those as well-connnected as Steve Jobs. China, where most Apple products are made, has been accused of executing people less for their crimes than for the organs they can supply. Nothing that starts with coercion and manipulation will end up fair or just.
That said, it'd be perfectly legitimate to award per-year points to those who agree to be donors, points that make them more likely to get an organ should they need one. It wouldn't make sense to sign up when a organ began to fail, since a single year's points wouldn't amount to much. But it would make a lot of sense to sign up when you are young and healthy.
In short, rewarding good behavior is perfectly legitimate. It treats people with respect and teaches responsibility by rewarding it. Manipulating them and dictating what they must do isn't. I'm in the former camp. Steve Jobs is in the latter. There is a wide gulf between the two points of view.
That's why I'm having to pay someone $25 to unlock an iPhone 3G that a nephew gave me. Steve Jobs, control freak extraordinaire, doesn't even allow long paid off iPhones to be unlocked. He has to control, he has to own, and he has to dictate. That's merely a nuisance when it's about cell phones. It's utter disastrous when applied to medical and legal policies.
--Michael W. Perry, editor of Eugenics and Other Evils by G. K. Chesterton