Three things on being human

Item 1: A letter I sent to Senators Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Boxer (D-Calif.)

Dear Senator, This morning I read an AP report about human-animal hybrids. I am not much of a media consumer so it might be the case that this is old news, that everyone already knows about this and Congress has dealt with it, but it is news to me. And it is appalling news.

Perhaps you remember the H.G. Wells book, The Island of Doctor Moreau. I remember when I first read the book I asked my father if it was possible to blend people with beasts. He assured me that it was not possible. But now I learn that he was wrong. For it seems that scientists, indeed, one may say “mad scientists” are amalgamating humans and animals in ways very similar to those foreseen by Mssr. Wells.

Perhaps, you have read the Book of Deuteronomy by Moses. In that book is a condemnation of people who have sex with animals, and an insistence that both the human and the animal involved in the act be put to death. To us moderns, that seems like such a harsh penalty. But there is a principle at stake: The principle that human beings are different from animals, that we are higher, more noble, and closer to God than mere beasts; that anything that causes confusion regarding that order is evil.

I am persuaded by reason that this modern scientific mixing of human and animal parts is as wicked as those acts forbidden by Moses; that those creatures so constructed, from this part of man and that part of beast, are the very epitome of confusion. When a man is a beast and a beast is a man can it be long before all are slaves? Who will be able to say, I have ‘inalienable rights’ without someone replying, ‘No, you are an animal get back in your cage’.

Please, Senator, do what you can to end this evil.


Respectfully and Gratefully,

Matt



Item 2: The Mercy of the Wicked is Cruel

Barbara Waller, the Schindler's lawyer said "As she entered her second week without the tube that sustained her life for 15 years, dehydration took its toll on the 41-year-old woman. Her tongue and eyes were bleeding and her skin was flaking off."

I ask you, is there any better argument for having judges face the electorate every two years?



Item 3: A paper on human organ transplants that I wrote for Dr. Forsythe at De Anza College

Today it is possible to cut the liver out of a recently living though now dead human being, and graft that organ into a completely different person, a person who would almost certainly die but for the grafted organ. It seems like a marvelous thing. And it is. However, to turn a true-ism on its head, every silver lining has a cloud. The cloud in this instance is the spectre of an organ shortage.

The government of the United States has determined that commerce in human organs should be disallowed - that the normal way for any demand to be met, the usual way to encourage the production of any scarce commodity- namely, free market capitalism should not apply to human organs for transplant. The practice of organ transplantation and the government’s role in the process raise many issues but I am going to constrain myself and address only one issue: Whether or not it is appropriate for the government of the United States to forbid the buying and selling of human organs for transplant.

I will get right to the crux of the matter and then, after telling you plainly what the only right conclusion is, show you how we must necessarily arrive at this conclusion: It is not appropriate for the government of the United States to forbid the buying and selling of human organs for transplant. It is not appropriate because it is inconsistent with the ideals of the American Revolution and of the Natural Law. It is not appropriate because it violates the laws of economics. It is not appropriate because it condemns many to die. It is not appropriate because ii defies the plain reading of the Constitution, oppresses the poor, creates scarcity where there could by man’s natural inclination to profit be plenty, condemns some to years of waiting on lists or even to death, and erodes those republican virtues that are necessary for a nation of free men.

Now, having built the steeple of this little argument, it seems only reasonable that I erect a foundation and walls and buttresses and pillars and gables and a roof to support it. It would not be fair of me, or wise to throw down before you so many high-sounding conclusions without offering some defense of those conclusions, some roadmap that shows how I arrived at those points. So then, I shall take them one by one, and perhaps, if you walk with me you will reach the same conclusion I have reached, that the government’s intrusion into this matter is an unmitigated evil.

Therefore, let me ask, what were those ideals of that revolution that birthed our nation? Can you imagine the men who threw tea into Boston Harbor countenancing government interference in their most intimate decisions? I ask you this knowing already the answer. Of course, you will answer in the negative. For you know, as every schoolboy knows, or ought to know that near the fore of the ideas under-girding the Revolution was the idea taken from John Locke’s Two Treatises on Government, that every man owns his own body, and his body is his to sell, in labor, or in part, or in the whole. So, I say again, it is not appropriate, no, not merely inappropriate. It is wrong, it is hideously and incomprehensibly wrong for the government of the United States to forbid the buying and selling of human organs for transplant. Our betrayel of our Founding Fathers it is like a child stabbing his mother in the stomach with a broken bottle. It is a slap across the face of our Founding Fathers who fought and died for our right to be free. It is the negation of the gift of our ancestors’ suffering and sacrifice.

But let us continue. For I know that today many people remember little, and care less about our ancestors. They see white-wigged men in velvet knee-britches and think they are so far removed from our modern lives that their opinions bear no weight in the decisions we must make. So, since their wisdom is neglected I will move on to more scientific arguments. I will move on and I will ask you, when do we see an abundance of goods produced? Oh, surely you already know the answer to this question and think me the vainglorious pedant for dragging this out; but I must for I am writing an essay, the form of which has been prescribed; and this is the prescription: Proof must be offered and no assertion of truth, even if it is an assertion of universally observed truth, may be made in the absence of evidence. Therefore, the answer to the question is: We see an abundance of a commodity when there is enough of an inducement to the potential producers of that commodity to cause them to decide to produce the commodity. That is, more simply: You get what you pay for. For instance, right now there is large demand for the Chrysler 300. People are willing to pay huge amounts of money for that model of car. How is the Daimler-Chrysler Corporation responding to this willingness of people to be separated from their money? It is building as many 300s as it possibly can. Conversely, large numbers of people are not willing to pay huge amounts of money for the Chrysler Crossfire. How is the Daimler-Chrysler Corporation responding to this lack of demand? It is producing fewer of that model. And we see in oil what we see in cars. We see in soybeans what we see in oil. We see in light bulbs what we see in soybeans. Indeed, when the market is allowed to operate there are no shortages. But we see in North Korea, and in Cuba, and in every place on the globe where commerce in some commodity is banned, that a shortage of that commodity is reported. In the United States where commerce in human organs is banned we see a shortage. Why? It is simple: We get what we pay for. Or in this case, organs rot in the ground, because no one is getting paid for them.

So, having discussed the ideals of the American Revolution, and Natural Law a la John Locke, and the laws of economics, let me now move on to death. The purpose of transplants is to preserve human life. As we know, we have shortage of organs. This shortage is caused, in part, by the ban on commerce in human organs. This shortage means that many sick people do not get the organs they need to live. That is, they die while waiting for an organ to be donated.

You might be thinking, “very well, you’ve proven your point in these four areas, but you are wrong about the oppression of the poor. The banning of commerce in human organs is specifically designed to protect the poor.”

Really? Is that so? Thomas Sowell in his essay “Organ Donations, Egalitarian Envy, and the High Cost of Busybodies ” tells of a poor woman living on welfare who has nothing going for her. Except, she has three kidneys. She could sell her extra kidney for many thousands of dollars, possibly lifting herself out of poverty. But the United States and its heinous National Organ Donation Act of 1984 press her down. They take from her the liberty to use her body, to use God’s special gift of a third kidney to raise herself out of penury. How, you ask, how can selling an organ relieve her destition? Because there is a man named Alonzo Mourning who is paid $23,000,000 per year to play basketball. He needs a new kidney in order to keep playing basketball. A new Kidney is worth at least $23,000,000 to him. But he is not allowed to buy one. So, a poor woman lives on welfare, eating the bread of other peoples’ sweat, when she could be self-supporting, if only the Congress would let Mr. Mourning buy her extra kidney.

Ahh, but you say, “but won’t the buying and selling of organs lead to even greater shortages as the rich buy all the available organs?” Hardly, as every economist knows, whenever authorities force lower-than-market prices upon a good or service, shortages and long lines develop. Look at bread in the U.S.S.R, heart surgery in Canada, or rental properties in San Francisco. What other proof do you need? And besides, the vast majority of human beings like to have sex. The more sex, the more people. The more people, the more organ donors. There will never be a shortage of organs.

I said at the beginning of this essay that this wicked practice of banning commerce in human organs for transplant is un-Constitutional. Let me explain how this is.
Article 1 of the United States Constitution gives Congress the power to make laws for the regulation of commerce, but only commerce between the States, between the United States and foreign lands, and between the United States and Indian Tribes. Within the borders of any particular state, the Congress is powerless to regulate commerce. One might argue that the framers meant to include this power, that it must have been an oversight but one who makes that argument would be wrong. The final words of the Bill or Rights are these: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.” What does this mean? It means that if a man in Anaheim wants to sell his corneas to a woman in Eureka the Congress of the United States has no power to interfere. It is that simple.

I have now explained all of the reasons for my conclusion but one. You will remember that I said the ban on commerce in organs erodes the republican virtues free people must have in order to remain free. This might be the most complicated argument because it is not necessarily the ban that erodes virtue, rather it is the rationing system that erodes virtue. The undergirding of a free republic is that individuals take care of their private needs, and that associations of individuals look after the needs of various groups, and that the whole mass of individuals, formed into the body politic looks after the needs of the state. In each case it is the strength of individuals who provide for their own needs. Or, voluntarily, to the needs of the weak. (Here I have in mind parents wo take care of children, and children who take care of elderly parents, any any who take care of the sick.) But the rationing program that accompanies the ban on organ transplants turns this on its head. It turns every person on the waiting lists into a beggar, a person unable to care for himself. It drives every person on the wating list into moral poverty. It teaches this lesson: “There is nothing you can do for yourself you have to wait for some big institution to help you.” What is that but the spreading of the putrid collectivist disease? A free republic can not live for long when the citizens of the state begin to believe that lie.

In conclusion, and I ask your forbearance for I have already given you my conclusions at the beginning and indeed, throughout the body of this essay: It is not appropriate for the government of the United States to forbid the buying and selling of human organs for transplant.