A while back we wrote a New York Times column on organ donation: why there is so little of it, and why we don’t pay people for organs. One of the central themes in that column was Harvard economist Al Roth‘s idea that repugnance constrains markets. For those of you with a slightly more academic bent, Roth has just released a paper that discusses these ideas in a way that non-economists will understand.
The Economics of Repugnance
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The opening of the paper (CA proposition against eating dog meat) reminded me of a story concerning my brother-in-law,Marc, a grad student in applied linguistics. He was tutoring a newly arrived Chinese mathematician, to help make his English pronunciation more understandable. They were going through the World Almanack comparing imports and exports of China and the US. In the section of US meat imports(so many thousands of tons of beef from Brazil, etc.) the mathematician got to the bottom of the list and said,”But no dog?”Marc, realised he could go beyond English pronunciation aid and talked about dogs as pets and Americans revulsion to dogs as food. And he sounded out his student and found that in China dog meat is considered very hearty and satisfying especially for cold winter nights.
The opening of the paper (CA proposition against eating dog meat) reminded me of a story concerning my brother-in-law,Marc, a grad student in applied linguistics. He was tutoring a newly arrived Chinese mathematician, to help make his English pronunciation more understandable. They were going through the World Almanack comparing imports and exports of China and the US. In the section of US meat imports(so many thousands of tons of beef from Brazil, etc.) the mathematician got to the bottom of the list and said,”But no dog?”Marc, realised he could go beyond English pronunciation aid and talked about dogs as pets and Americans revulsion to dogs as food. And he sounded out his student and found that in China dog meat is considered very hearty and satisfying especially for cold winter nights.
Well. I am going to make a case against organ transplation, as well as a case against the medical industry as a whole. It won’t be a popular stand, but I think it is cogent enough for those who bear with their disagreement with my ethical position to take from it something of value.
There are supposed to be medical ethics. We all have read stories about the many failures of living up to such a standard, and about just how imposssible it is to enforce any of those standards. We all also have loved ones for whom we would likely do just about anything to preserve their lives. But what is it really all about?
The medical industry is a huge profit-driven enterprise. I have nothing against profit, but with the intensification of profit generally comes ever more corruption, and, a willingness to overlook ethics. This is clearly the case in the medical industry. But that isn’t my point here. My point is about the ethics of medicine.
We all hold dear the sanctity of life. We’re appalled to read when suicide bombers kill scores. Our humanitarian instincts are intact.
Others, for religious reasons oppose abortion basing their objection again upon the sanctity of life.
These are not my arguments, and I merely pull them up from recollection to establish that the concept of sanctity of life has some human-truth validity to it.
I approach the problem differently. I have coined and cite here the moral imperative:
To live a life that detracts not at all from the lives others who will come into this world will have available to them to live after we leave it.
It is my assertion that if you cannot abide by the moral imperative, you are immoral.
Any reader here can take exception to the moral imperative, it is however, a cogent view, and one that has the strongest of philosophic arguments behind it.
Most all medicine is immoral by this perspective.
The ethical considerations of medicine are set for as, Do no harm.
This statement of medical ethics is millennia old, and it meant, do no harm to the patient.
Medical ethics however, can be easily expanded to mean, do no harm to either the patient or anyone else, which would seem to be implied by the original statement of medical ethics. I would argue, it is more implicitly implied than medical ethics in practice is applied to any given patient.
It is easy to see and illuminate how the practice of medicine harms everyone else.
The use of antibiotics has undeniably created superbugs that have killed many millions of people. Blood transfusions have made of the collective of human being’s circulatory systems a polluted pond of infectious and potentially infectious disease, providing organisms an opportunity to mutate and transform themselves into real threats to every human, again, no doubt already having killed many millions of people.
The medical invention of organ transplantation too has provided infectious disease and potentially infectious diseases an avenue and a niche where they can develop into widespread killers of millions of other humans.
The same is true of stem cell research.
In fact the same is true about just about the entirety of all of modern medicine’s treatments.
It is unfortunate for cognitive purposes that the religious community is so vocal in their opposition to medical propositions as their arguments based upon gods ad infinitum carry little weight within the medical community itself, as they are easily defused by empirical logic as fallacy based upon religious belief.
I however, do not approach it from a religious perspective. I approach it from a philosophic perspective. And in order for the medical community to defeat my arguments, they need to defeat the moral imperative I have asserted, again:
To live a life that detracts not at all from the lives others who will come into this world will have available to them to live after we leave it.
For medicine to ignore this philosophic moral imperative is not only arrogant and reckless, it is immoral, just like a suicide bomber is immmoral.
If you are a doctor who eases past this challenge, the very sanctity of every human life condemns you as immoral.
Don Robertson, The American Philosopher
Limestone, Maine
An Illustrated Philosophy Primer for Young Readers
Precious Life – Empirical Knowledge
The Grand Unifying Theory & The Theory of Time
http://www.geocities.com/donaldwrobertson/index.html
Art Auctions:
http://www.artbyus.com/auctions.php?a=6&b=4807
Well. I am going to make a case against organ transplation, as well as a case against the medical industry as a whole. It won’t be a popular stand, but I think it is cogent enough for those who bear with their disagreement with my ethical position to take from it something of value.
There are supposed to be medical ethics. We all have read stories about the many failures of living up to such a standard, and about just how imposssible it is to enforce any of those standards. We all also have loved ones for whom we would likely do just about anything to preserve their lives. But what is it really all about?
The medical industry is a huge profit-driven enterprise. I have nothing against profit, but with the intensification of profit generally comes ever more corruption, and, a willingness to overlook ethics. This is clearly the case in the medical industry. But that isn’t my point here. My point is about the ethics of medicine.
We all hold dear the sanctity of life. We’re appalled to read when suicide bombers kill scores. Our humanitarian instincts are intact.
Others, for religious reasons oppose abortion basing their objection again upon the sanctity of life.
These are not my arguments, and I merely pull them up from recollection to establish that the concept of sanctity of life has some human-truth validity to it.
I approach the problem differently. I have coined and cite here the moral imperative:
To live a life that detracts not at all from the lives others who will come into this world will have available to them to live after we leave it.
It is my assertion that if you cannot abide by the moral imperative, you are immoral.
Any reader here can take exception to the moral imperative, it is however, a cogent view, and one that has the strongest of philosophic arguments behind it.
Most all medicine is immoral by this perspective.
The ethical considerations of medicine are set for as, Do no harm.
This statement of medical ethics is millennia old, and it meant, do no harm to the patient.
Medical ethics however, can be easily expanded to mean, do no harm to either the patient or anyone else, which would seem to be implied by the original statement of medical ethics. I would argue, it is more implicitly implied than medical ethics in practice is applied to any given patient.
It is easy to see and illuminate how the practice of medicine harms everyone else.
The use of antibiotics has undeniably created superbugs that have killed many millions of people. Blood transfusions have made of the collective of human being’s circulatory systems a polluted pond of infectious and potentially infectious disease, providing organisms an opportunity to mutate and transform themselves into real threats to every human, again, no doubt already having killed many millions of people.
The medical invention of organ transplantation too has provided infectious disease and potentially infectious diseases an avenue and a niche where they can develop into widespread killers of millions of other humans.
The same is true of stem cell research.
In fact the same is true about just about the entirety of all of modern medicine’s treatments.
It is unfortunate for cognitive purposes that the religious community is so vocal in their opposition to medical propositions as their arguments based upon gods ad infinitum carry little weight within the medical community itself, as they are easily defused by empirical logic as fallacy based upon religious belief.
I however, do not approach it from a religious perspective. I approach it from a philosophic perspective. And in order for the medical community to defeat my arguments, they need to defeat the moral imperative I have asserted, again:
To live a life that detracts not at all from the lives others who will come into this world will have available to them to live after we leave it.
For medicine to ignore this philosophic moral imperative is not only arrogant and reckless, it is immoral, just like a suicide bomber is immmoral.
If you are a doctor who eases past this challenge, the very sanctity of every human life condemns you as immoral.
Don Robertson, The American Philosopher
Limestone, Maine
An Illustrated Philosophy Primer for Young Readers
Precious Life – Empirical Knowledge
The Grand Unifying Theory & The Theory of Time
http://www.geocities.com/donaldwrobertson/index.html
Art Auctions:
http://www.artbyus.com/auctions.php?a=6&b=4807
Your premise is that any action detrimental to another human is immoral? Is there any consideration of the greater good concept? A creation which heals millions for every one harmed (antibiotics, as an example) is still immoral?
Your premise is that any action detrimental to another human is immoral? Is there any consideration of the greater good concept? A creation which heals millions for every one harmed (antibiotics, as an example) is still immoral?
pax-
No. My premise is that anything that endangers the life humans will live be able to live in the future is immoral. In other words, the Utilitarian ideal of the best for the most is obsolete.
What is important is the best for the future.
Don Robertson, The American Philosopher
pax-
No. My premise is that anything that endangers the life humans will live be able to live in the future is immoral. In other words, the Utilitarian ideal of the best for the most is obsolete.
What is important is the best for the future.
Don Robertson, The American Philosopher