[shimmeringfaerie]

Originally Posted by BDF

If I throw a rock in the air, there is a 99.9999% chance it will come back to Earth, unless I one morning wake up to be superman, and throw the rock into orbit instead. Yes, life is based on assumptions of the future, otherwise how the hell can we make any rational choices? We evaluate the possible outcomes of different options the best that we can, and make a choice. One girl has a very high chance of dying prematurely, whereas another might not.

In your example, both kids stand an almost equal chance of being hit by a car the next day. It's a null point. It cancels itself out, whether it be car accident, meteor strike, tsunami, or spontaneous combustion.



I don't even know where or how to start arguing that. It appears you have a pessimistic outlook on life, fine, so do I to a large extent... but ultimately life is whatever you make of it. Suggesting that people would have better lives if they died early... is just ridiculous. Why don't we all kill ourselves at birth to spare ourselves the pain? I'm not even religious or anything, but Jesus Christ...



Again this is a null point, it goes both ways and so cancels out. Either of the kids could turn out to be anything, it purely depends on their upbringing, and to some extent genetics, but the genetics business is a grey area regarding whether or not someone will be "good" or "bad".


I don't like being as rude as I probably sound here, but none of your reasoning makes any sense. I found it difficult to even take your post seriously enough to even bother phrasing my own arguments coherently, so I'm sorry if I don't come across clearly. To be honest I face-palmed at some of the things I read in your post.

Alright, I'll make my argument more simple:

You said that the person who would get this kidney would live a full, productive, and hopefully happy life and that giving them a kidney would reap the most benefits for everyone.

And my point is that you have nothing to base that argument on. You cannot know any of that. You can't even predict that since you don't know which child will get the kidney. And sure, I don't know that this girl would have a longer, better life if she got the kidney. But I don't see why your assumptions are apparently reasonable and my potential assumptions are automatically null.

I'm not pessimistic. Which is why I don't think I could ever argue for a doctor refusing to put a child on the transplant list at all. Maybe putting her further down the list than an otherwise healthy child (though I can't think of many situations where a "healthy" child would need a tranplant). But to not put her on at all isn't right in my opinion.