(Note: I’ve clipped and pasted some of the paragraphs from the articles I’ve linked to, but the only way to appreciate the full nuance of the arguments is to read the articles in full. Do not assume my clips are the most important or salient points.)
USA Today recently came out in favor of payments to organ donors.
“Please help! My daddy needs a liver.” A billboard with that stirring message greeted thousands of motorists recently on a busy Chicago expressway. It’s one of many pleas from desperate families seeking organs for transplantation. Classified ads shout their need. So do Web pages.
The sad fact is that patients needing a transplant are more likely to die waiting than to receive organs. The wait in many locations is five years, and it could double by 2010.”
The Op-Ed goes on to note some tenative steps states are taking to compensate — to a limited extent — organ donors (for example, paying for the travel and lost-wages expenses of prospective donors while they are being tested and, if a fit, donating).
The opposing view, offered by Charles Fruit of the National Kidney Foundation, says , in part:
“the National Kidney Foundation opposes any market-based incentives that financially reward donors or their families who offer life-saving organs. Even on a trial basis, introducing money into such a fragile human decision-making process would set a dangerous precedent. Once we start down the road of treating organs like commodities, there’s no turning back.”
Virginia Postrel, former editor of Reason, and now a columnist with the Atlantic, takes issue with Fruit:
“The argument that paying organ donors is “an affront” to unpaid donors is disgusting. Are unpaid donors giving organs to save lives or just to make themselves feel morally superior? Even in the latter case, they shouldn’t care if other people get paid. They can still hold their noses in the air. Underlying this argument, which the NKF loves, seems to be a nagging sense of guilt: The current system takes something valuable without offering anything in return. It is, in other words, highly exploitative. If that exploitation suddenly goes away, the people who’ve been exploited in the past will realize they’ve been used and be mad. Personally, I don’t think that’s terribly likely, because most of today’s donors are, in fact, motivated by sympathy for recipients. But the fact that defenders of the system keep making the argument suggests they know they’re doing something a little shady.”
None of us is doing PR for the NKF — I am not sure anyone is, since they are pretending the debate isn’t happening — but any one of you could end up there (or someplace like it). So..
- Sometimes the moral arguments of your organization are held up in the glare of economic arguments from outside critics. Luckily, few of us will ever have to face a Virginia Postrel, but what do you do?
- Sometimes a national newspaper questions your mission validity, pointing out plainly that — despite your best efforts — you’re not solving the problem… but what do you do?
- If the firm you joined assigned you to the NKF … or another charitable … account, how do you decide to join the team? Can you, should you, say “no” if the strategy seems wrong (note that I am not talking about a corporation; I mean a organization upon whom lives depend).
Theoretical questions, theoretical musings, but I am fairly sure my fellow Marcom Contributors have had to ponder them in the past. What do we do?
(I should emphasize that I am not picking on the National Kidney Foundation. They are just the example.)
