A few short years ago, I was in the hospital, in dire circumstances. I was waken up in the wee hours of the morning, my bed surrounded by doctors and "other medical professionals", and told that I would be dead within two hours unless I accepted a public anonymous blood trandfusion.
Aside:
I had steadfastly refused this demand -- to the point of leaving one hospital "AMA" and self-admitting to another a hundred miles away. I had even offered to accept known blood from friends or relatives. No-dice. I was told I was prohibited from accepting any transfusion other than public "anonymous" blood. So much for "my body, my choice", and "choice in medicine", eh?
Now, the punchline: I was presented with "the papers", and pressured to sign them. These people expected me to die, and they were intent on either coercing me to accept "public" blood, or, signing "the papers". I would do neither, and they were not pleased.
My attitude at this point boiled down to "Piss on 'em!" I hit that point when, upon being assured "for the nth time" that public anonymous blood was perfectly safe to inject into my veins, I interrupted and said can I ask you a question? I asked, what would you, Mr. Doctor, do, if, while in the process of injecting a pint of that 'perfectly safe' blood into MY arm, discover that the hose had a small leak, and a single DROP of it had fallen onto YOUR arm?
I caught him off guard. He replied as I expected. He said that he would immediately stop whatever it was that he was doing, and go scrub up, with strong disinfectant.
I said uh-huh, I see. It's "safe" enough to put INTO my arm, but it's too dangerous to even allow a drop to TOUCH your arm. I think I'll take a pass on that offer, doc.
But I digress.
When the "professionals" thought I was going to die, they were intensely coercive in their efforts to get me to "sign the papers", and it really pissed me off.
I imagine they are accustomed to getting their way. Most people are not stubborn Cossack sons of bitches like me. <g> MOST people will cave when cornered and pressured. Unfortunately. (Unfortunately NOT only for them -- it's unfortunate for all of us, because the more compliant "the masses" are, the more we all are placed in the utterly unreasonable situation of having to fight for our rights in a scenario where we should be able to trust "professionals" to look after our best interests. (Without "best interests" defined as "killing us".)
Postscript: I never "signed the papers". I never "took the public blood". I never died.
Economics 101. Either a) the patient croaks, the hospital carves him up and MAKES a bunch of money; or b) the patient survives and the hospital LOSES a bunch of money taking care of him. In that conflict, the doctors will be sore tempted to gloss over moral distinctions, to cut corners and to go for the bucks. They will rationalize that the patient isn't going to make it anyway. They will excuse themselves with the thought that somebody else needs the body parts. They will lie to themselves.
Some doctors will stand firm. Too many will be corrupted by the money.
If they inject you or any patient with that nice, safe public blood, and if the blood is contaminated, the patient's organs cannot be later be harvested without passing his disease(s) to the organ recipient.
That's flippin' scary. Glad to hear you made it out of there alive.
Nothing wrong with being a stubborn Cossack, or a stubborn Irish for that matter, when it comes to decisions that affect your health.