Ethics professors kill kidney patients

You might think that modern over-educated scholars would have superior views of ethics than medieval Bible-reading monks, but it is not the case. The wackiest opinions come from medical ethicists and university philosophers.

The Si Valley newspaper reports:

Five years later, a growing number of patients like Rubinstein are using the site to find living donors. Johns Hopkins Hospital is piloting an app to make it easier for people who need transplants to craft a Facebook post. And an ethical debate rages on in the medical community.

Some medical ethicists fear the use of social media creates a separate organ donation system in which the cutest kid or most computer literate person receives a transplant, allowing them to bypass long waits for organs from the deceased.

"There's potential discrimination and unfairness. The more tech-savvy you are the more likely you are able to make this work," said Dr. Robert Veatch, a medical ethics professor at Georgetown University's Kennedy Institute of Ethics. "Closely related to that, the effect is likely to increase the transfer of organs to people who are attractive recipients."

In the United States, 122,543 people are waiting for an organ transplant and an average of 22 people die every day because they don't receive one in time, according to October data from the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network.

Apparently the ethics professors would rather let 22 people a day die, than allow people to donate kidneys to attractive recipients, or sell them to less attractive people.