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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Hell: Kill him first, we need his liver
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
Interesting. I think Max.'s question is valid and PatDYS points to the obvious answer: anaesthesize the prisoner, take out any vital organs you wish, and thereby execute the prisoner... To be sure to kill quickly, they could always rip out the beating heart last, even if that is not particularly required.
Or couldn't they just hook the prisoner up to a life-support machine, then put a bullet in his brain? Presumably the machine would keep the carcase in good enough condition for the organs to be harvested, and the prisoner would feel no more pain - physical or mental - than in a normal execution.
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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Dave W.
Shipmate
# 8765
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Posted
No need for fancy life-support machines - the brain is already set up to regulate those functions. They could just put the patient in a coma.
Posts: 2059 | From: the hub of the solar system | Registered: Nov 2004
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Dave W.
Shipmate
# 8765
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Posted
For "patient" read "prisoner", natch.
Posts: 2059 | From: the hub of the solar system | Registered: Nov 2004
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Duck
Shipmate
# 10181
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Posted
Originally posted by Ken: quote:
The thing is so obviously wrong that its hard to imagine anyone doing it. Its wrong on the raping babies and eating people alive sort of level. Intolerable.
I think that the death penalty is wrong to that extent - i don't believe that deliberately killing people is ever right.
However, if you accept the death penalty, then surely saving the lives of several people by its application is morally good? isn't saving other lives part of the 'justification' for it in terms of deterrence & preventing recidivism anyway? If you decide that criminals owe society reparations for the crimes they have committed, then why shouldn't part of that be to use their organs to save the lives of others? If people have already forfeited their right to life, then surely they have forfeited their right to a liver?
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'Truth is my authority, not authority my truth' - Mary Dyer, Quaker martyr.
Posts: 1014 | From: Lots of planets have a north | Registered: Aug 2005
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Eigon
Shipmate
# 4917
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Posted
Duck, your arguement pre-supposes that the criminal really is a criminal, and not just someone the government wants to silence. It also pre-supposes that the person was guilty - there have been enough miscarriages of justice to persuade me that the death penalty is never a safe option, let alone carving the body up into useful pieces.
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Laugh hard. Run fast. Be kind.
Posts: 3710 | From: Hay-on-Wye, town of books | Registered: Aug 2003
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Duck
Shipmate
# 10181
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Posted
True, and maybe i didn't make it clear enough that i'm personally not in favour of capital punishment to begin with for all the reasons you give.
But once someone is going to be killed, then you've already effectively said that their body is no longer their own. So if out of that death which is already going to happen, then you can potentially save several lives - why not? It just seems to logically flow from the pro-capital-punishment arguments - i'm surprised involuntary organ donation doesn't already happen in the USA. They are dead - how's using their organs to help someone else worse than killing them in the first place?
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'Truth is my authority, not authority my truth' - Mary Dyer, Quaker martyr.
Posts: 1014 | From: Lots of planets have a north | Registered: Aug 2005
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Doublethink.
Ship's Foolwise Unperson
# 1984
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Posted
You may not have seen some of the reports on (think it was C4) that if you are accused of a capital crime in China you have a 99.9 % probability of conviction - I wonder why that might be.
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All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome. George Orwell
Posts: 19219 | From: Erehwon | Registered: Aug 2005
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
If I were O-negative, I wouldn't even JAYWALK in China.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Duck:
But once someone is going to be killed, then you've already effectively said that their body is no longer their own. So if out of that death which is already going to happen, then you can potentially save several lives - why not? It just seems to logically flow from the pro-capital-punishment arguments -
Larry Niven really did put it better than I could.
If you ever get the chance to read his very short SF novel A Gift from Earth, give it a bash.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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Duck
Shipmate
# 10181
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Posted
Read it, thanks - good suggestion.
I'd reckon that China's capital punishment record has more to do with it being a police state than the organ donations though.
Would it be such a problem if money wasn't involved - if the organs just got put on some sort of central waiting list like the UK transplant list?
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'Truth is my authority, not authority my truth' - Mary Dyer, Quaker martyr.
Posts: 1014 | From: Lots of planets have a north | Registered: Aug 2005
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