This blog has now closed. Please visit my new blog, Stepreo.

Archive: health

The rights of the dead (an update)

16 January 2008 09:08

Categories: Current affairs, Politics

Well I see that the debate about organ donation has reared its head again. My views have, if anything, hardened since I wrote on this subject last year. Please read that post before going on to read this update.

I am a liberal. As such, I sympathise with the view that the state should not have a right to take human organs after that person has died. However, I don’t agree with this.

The reason is this: dead people don’t have rights. They can’t. Because they’re dead. And as much as I would like to have a say over what happens to my body when I die, the reality is that I don’t have much choice in the matter. Maggots don’t care much about human rights, you see.

Rights and liberties can only be extended to people from the moment they are born until the moment they die. After all, it is a bit of a stretch to say that an unborn child has rights if the only thing she can do is wobble around inside a womb while being physically unable to be detached from her mother. And you certainly can’t take advantage of liberties when you’re dead because your only function will be to rot.

A common rebuttal is that although you will be dead, your next of kin won’t. But I never got the big whoop-de-doo over kinship anyway. If you’re married, then yes. But not so much with blood relatives. And if you have a major libertarian / individualist streak, chances are that you won’t marry. Many people dislike their relatives, and it is certainly a gigantic leap to say that their wishes are perfectly aligned with mine.

As such, the idea of having relatives make their decisions for me once I’m dead puts a chill up my spine as much as the idea of the state making them. For me, it is no more oppressive for the state to have an automatic right to my organs once I am dead than it is for my next of kin to.

And if the state has that access, it will be doing it to save the lives of dying people rather than just huffing about it with their arms folded. Besides which, I will find it very difficult to care either way, given that I will be dead and all.

(Not that I hate my relatives, you understand. The point I’m trying to make is that when I’m dead I don’t get a say anyway, so it makes no difference to me who makes these decisions, whether it’s the state, relatives, or complete strangers.)

The question that this organ donation hoo-ha asks is this: Should the rights of the dying be put ahead of the rights of those who are already dead? The answer is surely ‘yes’.

Interesting posts from both sides of the debate:

6 comments

Sleep deprivation

6 December 2007 18:16

Categories: General, Personal, University

People who have been reading this blog for a long time may know that I have often had difficulty getting to sleep. It is not unusual for me to go around the place feeling a bit sorry for myself because I feel tired. And I like to think I have become a bit of a master at coping having had just a few hours of sleep on the odd occasion when I have to get up earlier than normal. I don’t often get ill. But these past couple of days have been terrible.

I had an exam yesterday. That is the reason why I haven’t been able to blog so much over the past couple of weeks, in case you were wondering. Unfortunately, the exam was at 9:30am which meant getting up before 7am.

I know that lots of people have to get up at worse times and more often. I think it is easier to get up if it is just part of your normal routine though. I had to get up at around 7am more often in previous years and it felt like just a minor inconvenience rather than a full-on nightmare.

I am a night-owl as it is. Nowadays my lectures tend to be in late afternoon rather than early morning. I usually work in the evenings. So normally I don’t get to sleep until around 3am or 4am — and I don’t get up until around noon.

This is perfect for my normal routine, but when I am given one day — just one day — when I have to get up four or five hours earlier than normal, it is full-on panic stations time. Normally I try to get up a bit earlier every day, but it doesn’t really work. If I don’t have to get up early, I don’t get up early. I have tried all sorts of things like giving up coffee, but they never work.

Although I have done it before, I felt like I couldn’t afford to get to sleep at around 4am before having a vital 7am start. So I decided to get up at 9am on Tuesday morning, hoping that it would make me tired earlier in the evening.

Of course, that didn’t happen. I had awful trouble falling asleep, and in fact I finally dropped off at around my usual time — 4am. For a 6:45 start. The upshot was that in two days I had around 8 hours of sleep.

At first it felt okay. Not great, but capable. I suppose when you have an important exam you don’t really have the time to feel tired. You just have to get on with it. I felt that mentally I was fine, so I had no problems dealing with the exam in that regard, although my writing hand was tired, so it was a bit of a scrawl.

It started to hit me on the way back home. Ever since then, I have felt just about the worst I have ever felt. It was hunger, shortness of breath and a flying heart rate at first. Since then it has been indigestion, strange aches all over my body (particularly in my upper arms at the moment), a headache, loss of appetite, dizziness and — my favourite — inability to sleep properly.

I felt like taking a nap yesterday afternoon and ended up staying in bed until around 8pm. I got very little sleep during that period and when I did get to sleep — at around 11pm — it was the start of a highly uncomfortable night. I must have woken up six or seven times and my duvet felt like it weighed a ton.

I have often felt tired and lethargic, but everything that has happened to me before feels minor. Now I know what real sleep deprivation feels like.

7 comments

A bit of fun with US politics

24 November 2007 15:44

Categories: Current affairs, General, Internet, Personal, Politics, Technology

I came across another of those political quizzes. This one matches you up with the US Presidential candidates. It’s quite smart.

You can choose which topics you’re interested in by distributing 20 points among 14 categories. I gave one point to each category then bumped up a few areas where I feel strongest. It then gives you a set of questions based on those topics.

Once you’ve answered them, it ranks the Presidential candidates in order of similarity. You can go right into each question and see how each of the candidates would answer each question, with all kinds of quotes, voting records and suchlike to back it up.

Of course, it’s not very fair for me to be waxing lyrical about American politics. I have never set foot in the country, and chances are I could have different views on American political issues if I actually lived there. A lot of these are very US-centric questions rather than the big ideological picture.

Still, it is interesting to learn a bit more about the candidates. The names we all see are Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Ron Paul and Rudy Giuliani. Sometimes John McCain. It’s not often you hear of any of the others. But it’s important to learn about them.

I remember at around this stage of the last US Presidential election we were discussing the Democratic candidates in our modern studies class. Trying to work out which of the candidates were the most important, our teacher immediately scored off John Kerry because he was a no-hoper! (In retrospect, she was actually probably right.)

Anyway, the quiz. The candidate who comes out as most similar to me is someone I’ve never heard of before — Mike Gravel. We are 81% similar, with very similar views on drugs, civil liberties, gay rights, crime and punishment, abortion, environment and immigration. But we have dissimilar views on social security and economics.

Second is someone else I’ve never heard of — Christopher Dodd, with 75%. We are different on social security and very different on economics. Dennis Kucinich also has 75%, but we disagree on taxes and budget, social security and economics.

Of the big guns, Barack Obama is fourth with 74% (different on taxes and budget, social security and very different on crime and punishment (Obama supports the death penalty)). Hillary Clinton is 66% similar (different views on taxes and budget, drugs, social security and very different on crime and punishment).

All of the Democratic candidates score more highly than the Republican candidates. The top Republican candidate for me is Ron Paul — 9^th with 61%. We have very similar views on drugs, civil liberties and crime and punishment, but very different views on immigration, health care and abortion.

Rudy Giuliani only comes out 13^th with 47%. We have very similar views on environment and gun control, but very different views on gay rights, Iraq and foreign policy, health care, civil liberties, drugs and crime and punishment.

My least similar is my namesake, Duncan Hunter. We are only 30% similar, with similar views on social security (and even that is only because neither of us has an opinion on it).

Via Blah Blah Flowers.

8 comments

Rights of the dead versus the rights of the dying

18 July 2007 02:38

Categories: Current affairs, Economics, Politics

I usually think of myself as a liberal. But maybe I am different when it comes to organ donation — or when it comes to dead people. I certainly understand and sympathise with the viewpoint put forward by Longrider.

Our bodies belong to us, not the state. We decide what becomes of them after death, not the state. If we decide to donate them, then that should be our choice, not the state’s.

But I can’t help thinking that Liam Donaldson’s idea of changing the current system of opting in to an organ donation scheme to one where you have to opt out is a sensible solution to a major problem.

We all know that there is a shortage of organs. As such, lives are lost (one person per day apparently). Moreover, it seems to be generally accepted that many people — probably a majority — would want their organs donated after they have died. It’s just that most people do not get round to putting their name down and getting that donor card. Longrider says:

So because these people did not specifically tell the state why they were not on the register, the state is to assume in all its arrogance that they were guilty of apathy.

But I don’t think it would be arrogance for the state to assume people were guilty of apathy. The BBC story suggests that 70% of people would like to donate their organs, but only 20% get round to signing up.

Moreover, it makes common sense that people would be apathetic. While carrying a donor card may give you a “warm glow”, this is probably not a high enough incentive to encourage people to go to the hassle of registering. Under the current system, people who are indifferent or just slightly in favour of donating their organs actually do not donate their organs. As such, lives are lost.

As for people who flatly object to donating their organs after death, they surely needn’t worry about the system changing to an opt-out. You might say that if the current system had the problem of “not getting round to opting in” then the proposed changes would lead to people “not getting round to opting out”. But this wouldn’t be the case.

The reason that people do not get round to registering at the moment is because they do not have particularly strong views one way or another. But if you object to having your organs donated, you do hold a strong view. So people who don’t want to donate their organs will have a sufficient incentive to opt out. So they will.

I can understand why some people find it objectionable that the “default” option would be for your organs to be donated without having given your express permission. As Longrider says, the proposal is one to steal the bodies of the dead. This leads on to an interesting topic tackled by Chris Dillow: do dead people have rights?

I would have thought not. I would strongly hope that my wishes are respected when I am dead. But to be frank, if there is one time in my life (ahem) when I won’t worry about my rights, it will be when I am dead. After all, it’s not as if I will care much about it then. I will be dead, so it would be a little bit impossible.*

I can understand why this might be different if you are a religious person. But even then, I would have thought that this is mostly concerned with concepts like “spirit” rather than your body itself. After all, your body is a bit of a lost cause as it will only be eaten by maggots anyway.

In sum, I think the idea that the state “steals the bodies of the dead” is a little bit grisly. But it’s not nearly as grisly as letting one person per day die due to a shortage of organs when there is no shortage of potential willing donors.

* For similar reasons, I never really understand the hoo-ha surrounding inheritance tax. A tax you only pay when you’re dead? Surely more taxes should be like this! Moreover, one of the strongest arguments against high taxes is the fact that it reduces incentives to work. But there’s not much you can do to incentivise a dead person to do, well, anything really.

4 comments

Milk saves and kills

14 July 2007 02:24

Categories: Current affairs, Entertainment, Food and drink, Internet, Technology

One of the strangest things on the entire internet (and that really is saying something) is the BBC News feature, Most Popular Now. It can be found in the sidebar of most pages on the BBC News website. I often have a glance at it because often you do find some interesting stories there.

But it is really weird. Sometimes you see stories in there that are literally four or five years old. And it is not as if they are particularly interesting stories either. Okay, so that story about the bloke who was forced to marry a goat (and the goat’s subsequent suffocation on a plastic bag) was quite funny.

But the other day a rather unenlightening (and distinctly not very newsy) article about how to write a CV was right up there in the top five “most emailed”. Why would you email that to someone? To “gently hint” that you think they might be bad at writing CVs?

Today, for seemingly no good reason, this three-year-old story about a link between milk and ovarian cancer is the second most emailed story at the moment.

I realise that it is quite banal to point out the often contradictory nature of scientific studies on the various health effects of food. Red wine makes your heart happy but your liver sad. We all know it, and we are bombarded with so much contradictory information that we really might as well not bother.

You remember that advert that showed a girl guzzling down five litres of cooking oil because that is just what eating crisps is like (if you eat your annual consumption of crisps all in one go)? Almost put me off eating crisps. The next day I visited the dentist. He told me to eat more crisps and less chocolate. Not that I eat much chocolate anyway. I eat about three packets of crisps per day, so it’s a wonder I don’t constantly pee cooking oil.

Evidence of the fact that milk saves and kills Anyway, to veer back from that self-indulgent tangent, the point I am trying to make is this. It is slightly funny that the story about milk maybe possibly perhaps causing ovarian cancer was gazumped by a story saying that milk could cut the risk of getting diabetes and heart disease.