Bill prohibiting organ discrimination is now law in Maryland

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http://autisticadvocacy.org/2015/04/we- ... s-the-law/

This makes Maryland the third state to ban organ transplant solely on the basis of intellectual and/or developmental disability. This was based on a model bill written by the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network.

I'm glad that law passed at least there. "language from their web sites saying that they would not perform transplants for anyone with a 'severe' developmental or psychiatric disability, regardless of medical need"... that's horrible! Like their lives are worth less than the others', like they have less quality of life, and like their problems can't be managed! Nobody but God has the right to play God and decide, without knowing, whose life is worth more. Anyway, it should be first come, first served. Everyone is equal, and those whose lives are worth "less" should be given a chance to IMPROVE their lives... not thrown away like garbage.

I had no idea there was discrimination in this area of organ donation. Regardless, there would be enough organs for everyone and the wait list to have a transplant would dissapear over night if we adopted a normative consent "opt out" organ donation policy rather than the current failed model of "opt in".

I see all these campaigns and fund raising for organ donation to be redundant. If that money was spent to lobby the goverment to change to an opt out program, all these problems would be solved over night and we wouldn't have people dying needlessly on wait lists.

There seems to be at least some places, and a person with PDD-NOS has already suffered for it:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lou-melga ... 23073.html

Noca, your proposition would likely backfire. They might rush to pronounce autistics dead or brain dead before they actually are, or not try as hard as they could to save autistics, because they think we're worth more dead than alive... our organs are worth more than we are worth alive. That would be a horror show.

Well. This isn't good. People are intrinsically worth the same, so when deciding on who to save when you can only save a subset of them, you have to look at extrinsic factors, and someone who is severely mentally disabled is not worth anywhere near as much economically, nor are they likely to have as good a quality of life, as someone who is not so disabled. If you have enough organs, then of course you save everyone, but if you don't, you have to prioritise.

Now, I know a lot of you aren't going to bother processing what I just wrote, and will immediately leap to criticise my "vile belief" that "the disabled should be killed"...

I don't think anyone has the right to judge someone else's quality of life.

And in severe shortages only the super wealthy should be allowed access because they're worth more economically and thus have a better quality of life. I don't see this logic flying very far.

What if the said disabled person was a computer hacking whiz that worked trying to secure our country's networks from outside attack, and Mr. Bumbledick owned a few dominoes dirty diarrhea pizza franchises. By your logic Bumbledick wins because he's worth more money and thus Dominoe's dirty diarrhea Pizza is more valuable than national security.

You're basically attaching a monetary value to a person's life which I think most people find morally corrupt.

Actually, the computer whizz is more valuable, because their services are worth a lot more.

If there were such severe shortages, it would make sense to prioritise the super rich in exchange for money, because that money could be used to help a lot more people.

I may not have the right to judge someone elses quality of life, but no-one has the right to an organ transplant either. Limited resources have to be rationed out somehow. In the lifeboat situation, would you treat a doctor the same as a football player?

This discrimination I suspect is rooted in shortages of available organs from donors. There would be no such thing as a shortage and thus this issue would be resolved on its own if our countries would adopt a opt out program.

Last time I read an article relating to this topic. The country in question went from around like a 12% donor rate to a 97% donor rate. I would dig the article up and find the exact source but I really can't be bothered atm and you are free to look for yourself. Spain for example has an opt out donation system.

The low donor rates have more to do with laziness and indifference than they do with people actually not wanting to donate their organs. Lets just end this nonsense and stop the needless deaths of those waiting for organ.

If you're really worried about that, you *could* opt out...