R: If You Want My Organs, You'll Have to Pry Them from My Warm, Dead Body

The U.S.—and the world, in fact—has a shortage of organ donors. Over one hundred thousand Americans are currently waiting for life-saving transplants. Many people who would be willing donors never register—and when they die they take with them cures that some patients need. But what if we make organ donation mandatory? (Of course it would be doublespeak to call it "donation" then.) No doubt many more lives would be saved, at the expense of only the dead (or rather, their bodies). There is good reason to believe that nearly everyone would be willing to donate their organs if that were the default arrangement (the so-called "opt-out" system). Such altruism is not only natural to humans, but also encouraged by most religions. And yet there are some minority faiths—for instance, Shinto—that take a strong stand against transplantation. Moreover, many of the major religions disagree on the precise timeline of death—and thus when it is legal to remove the organs. Is this an instance where we should sacrifice religious freedom for the common good? Another line of argument is that mandatory organ donation is fundamentally utilitarian—an outside authority must determine the value of the organs to the (perhaps unwilling) donor and to the recipient. And although it might be a slippery slope, is it conceivable that this same calculus could be used to justify forced removal of organs from the living? Or, even more radically, could this lead to some "less worthy" individuals being sacrificed to provide life-saving transplants for those who are deemed more worthy? Maybe, but perhaps we should not spurn all compulsion because of some troubling, yet remote, possibilities. Especially where human life is concerned, it may be fair to demand societal cohesion.