Posted on 09/04/2009 4:15:09 AM PDT by Man50D
Cass Sunstein, President Barack Obama’s nominee to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), has advocated a policy under which the government would “presume” someone has consented to having his or her organs removed for transplantation into someone else when they die unless that person has explicitly indicated that his or her organs should not be taken.
Under such a policy, hospitals would harvest organs from people who never gave permission for this to be done.
Outlined in the 2008 book “Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness,” Sunstein and co-author Richard H. Thaler argued that the main reason that more people do not donate their organs is because they are required to choose donation.
Sunstein and Thaler pointed out that doctors often must ask the deceased’s family members whether or not their dead relative would have wanted to donate his organs. These family members usually err on the side of caution and refuse to donate their loved one’s organs.
“The major obstacle to increasing [organ] donations is the need to get the consent of surviving family members,” said Sunstein and Thaler.
This problem could be remedied if governments changed the laws for organ donation, they said. Currently, unless a patient has explicitly chosen to be an organ donor, either on his driver’s license or with a donor card, the doctors assume that the person did not want to donate and therefore do not harvest his organs. Thaler and Sunstein called this “explicit consent.”
They argued that this could be remedied if government turned the law around and assumed that, unless people explicitly choose not to, then they want to donate their organs – a doctrine they call “presumed consent.”
“Presumed consent preserves freedom of choice, but it is different from explicit consent because it shifts the default rule. Under this policy, all citizens would be presumed to be consenting donors, but they would have the opportunity to register their unwillingness to donate,” they explained.
The difference between explicit and presumed consent is that under presumed consent, many more people “choose” to be organ donors. Sunstein and Thaler noted that in a 2003 study only 42 percent of people actively chose to be organ donors, while only 18 percent actively opted out when their consent was presumed.
In cases where the deceased’s wishes are unclear, Sunstein and Thaler argued that a “presumed consent” system would make it easier for doctors to convince families to donate their loved one’s organs.
Citing a 2006 study, Thaler and Sunstein wrote: “The next of kin can be approached quite differently when the decedent’s silence is presumed to indicate a decision to donate rather than when it is presumed to indicate a decision not to donate. This shift may make it easier for the family to accept organ donation.”
The problem of the deceased’s family is only one issue, Sunstein and Thaler said, admitting that turning the idea of choice on its head will invariably run into major political problems, but these are problems they say the government can solve through a system of “mandated choice.”
“Another [problem] is that it is a hard sell politically,” wrote Sunstein and Thaler. “More than a few people object to the idea of ‘presuming’ anything when it comes to such a sensitive matter. For these reasons we think that the best choice architecture for organ donations is mandated choice.”
Mandated choice is a process where government forces you to make a decision – in this case, whether to opt out of being an organ donor to get something you need, such as a driver’s license.
“With mandated choice, renewal of your driver’s license would be accompanied by a requirement that you check a box stating your organ donation preferences,” the authors stated. “Your application would not be accepted unless you had checked one of the boxes.”
To ensure that people’s decisions align with the government policy of more organ donors, Sunstein and Thaler counseled that governments should follow the state of Illinois’ example and try to influence people by making organ donation seem popular.
“First, the state stresses the importance of the overall problem (97,000 people [in Illinois] on the waiting list and then brings the problem home, literally (4,700 in Illinois),” they wrote.
“Second, social norms are directly brought into play in a way that build on the power of social influences [peer pressure]: ‘87 percent of adults in Illinois feel that registering as an organ donor is the right thing to do’ and ’60 percent of adults in Illinois are registered,’” they added.
Sunstein and Thaler reminded policymakers that people will generally do what they think others are doing and what they believe others think is right. These presumptions, which almost everyone has, act as powerful factors as policymakers seek to design choices.
“Recall that people like to do what most people think is right to do; recall too that people like to do what most people actually do,” they wrote. “The state is enlisting existing norms in the direction of lifestyle choices.”
Thaler and Sunstein believed that this and other policies are necessary because people don’t really make the best decisions.
“The false assumption is that almost all people, almost all of the time, make choices that are in their best interest or at the very least are better than the choices that would be made [for them] by someone else,” they said.
This means that government “incentives and nudges” should replace “requirements and bans,” they argued.
Neither Sunstein nor Thaler currently are commenting on their book, a spokesman for the publisher, Penguin Group, told CNSNews.com.
In a question-and-answer section on the Amazon.com Web site, Thaler and Sunstein answered a few questions about their book.
When asked what the title “Nudge” means and why people need to be nudged, the authors stated: “By a nudge we mean anything that influences our choices. A school cafeteria might try to nudge kids toward good diets by putting the healthiest foods at front.
“We think that it's time for institutions, including government, to become much more user-friendly by enlisting the science of choice to make life easier for people and by gently nudging them in directions that will make their lives better,” they wrote.
“…The human brain is amazing, but it evolved for specific purposes, such as avoiding predators and finding food,” said Thaler and Sunstein. “Those purposes do not include choosing good credit card plans, reducing harmful pollution, avoiding fatty foods, and planning for a decade or so from now. Fortunately, a few nudges can help a lot. …”
Combine involuntary organ donation with End of Life planning and you have a strong incentive to deny medical care. Those organs are worth millions.
Bump to your post.
Whomever thought this up must be a fan of that famous Monty Python and the Holy Grail “Bring Out Your Dead” scene ...
No one will want my organs since I’ve had a blood-borne cancer.
No one will want my organs since I’ve had a blood-borne cancer.
***
Actually, me too - Mantle Cell Lymphoma ...
Yours will be given to people that they have to treat, but don’t like.
Well, my kidneys don’t work - I’m on dialysis - but your point may be valid.
Gosh Mr Conservative, we did everything we could to save your son...
Sunstein and Thaler pointed out that doctors often must ask the deceased’s family members whether or not their dead relative would have wanted to donate his organs. These family members usually err on the side of caution and refuse to donate their loved one’s organs.
Exactly. If I wanted to donate my organs, I would state so. I don't so I didn't.
Assuming donation unless someone says no is so bloodthirsty and barbaric.
How many lives will be lost because the doctors want to harvest organs while they're still in good condition and will lie to the families? They'll end up killing people for the profit.
What savages.
The people this yahoo has surrounded himself with are more than just ridiculous, they are dangerous. At what point are those charged with protecting us from domestic enemies, ie., CONGRESS, going to do something about them??!!
When you want to buy “a” box, instead buy 10.
Let’s go Freepers. Let’s start investigating each of these Czars!!! Obama and Soros shadow government.
Here is the list:
50 Czars! Bypassing the authority of Congress, Barack Obama rules through czars — the beginnings of dictatorship:
1.Herbert Allison Jr., bailout czar, [replaced Bush bailout czar Neel Kashkari, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Financial Stability confirmed by Senate]
2.Alan Bersin, border czar
3.Dennis Blair, intelligence czar [Director of National Intelligence, a Senate confirmed position]
4.John Brennan, counterterrorism czar
5.Carol Browner, energy czar
6.Adolfo Carrion, urban affairs czar
7.Ashton Carter, weapons czar [actually Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics and so subject to Senate confirmation]
8.Aneesh Chopra, technology czar
9.Jeffrey Crowley, [openly gay white man] AIDS czar
10.Cameron Davis, Great Lakes czar
11.Nancy-Ann DeParle, health czar
12.Earl Devaney, stimulus oversight czar
13.Joshua DuBois, religion czar, aka God czar
14.Arne Duncan, education czar
15.Kenneth Feinberg, pay czar
16.Daniel Fried, Guantanamo closure czar
17.J. Scott Gration, Sudan czar
18.Melissa Hathaway, [soon to be] cybersecurity czar
19.David J. Hayes, water czar [a Deputy Interior Secretary and therefore subject to Senate oversight]
20.Richard Holbrooke, Afghanistan-Pakistan (Af-Pak) czar
21.John Holdren, science czar
22.Kevin Jennings, safe schools czar [nominated to be Assistant Deputy Secretary of Education, Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools, a newly created post; openly gay founder of an organization dedicated to promoting pro-homosexual clubs and curricula in public schools]
23.Van Jones, green jobs czar
24.Gil Kerlikowske, drug czar
25.Ron Kirk, trade czar
26.Vivek Kundra, infotech czar [Shoplifted four shirts, worth $33.50 each, from J.C. Penney in 1996 (source)]
27.Douglas Lute, war czar [retained from Bush administration, married to Jane Holl Lute, currently a Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security]
28.George Mitchell, Mideast peace czar
29.Ed Montgomery, car czar [replacing Steve Rattner, who stepped down amid controversy over his former firm’s role in a possible kickback scandal]
30.Lynn Rosenthal, domestic violence czar
31.Dennis Ross, Mideast policy czar
32.Gary Samore, weapons of mass destruction czar
33.Todd Stern, climate change czar
34.Cass Sunstein, regulatory czar
35.Larry Summers, economic czar
36.Michael Taylor, food czar
37.Arturo Valenzuela, Latin-American czar (nominee) [although this post is referred to as a czar, he is nominatied to be Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs and so is subject to Senate confirmation]
38.Paul Volcker, economic czar number two
39.Elizabeth Warren, TARP czar [chair of the [Congressional Oversight Panel for the Trouble Assets Relief Program; note that Herb Allison is more frequently called the TARP czar]
40.Jeffrey Zients, government performance czar [replaced original nominee Nancy Killefer who withdrew her name after issues with her personal income tax filings surfaced]
Positions established but not yet filled...
41.behavioral science czar
42.copyright czar
Positions being planned: 1.income redistribution czar
2.land-use czar
3.consumer financial protection czar, aka mortgage czar (source)
4.radio-internet fairness czar
5.student loan czar, to oversee a program of mandatory service in return for college money (source)
6.voter list czar
7.zoning czar
And another reason to kill ObamaCare! If someone wants to donate they can but no one should be forced to after they can no longer give consent, that is just wrong!
Under communism/socialism, you are not a citizen. Instead, you are “subject” to the government’s wishes.
Don’t forget that not only will they have your medical history in the national database, it will be cross referenced to the GPS co-ordinants thanks to the upcoming census.
Notice how all this stuff is coming together like it is all one plan?
Ment to say the GPS co-ordinants of your home.
Speaking of devils...
Thanks for the ping!
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