Altruism abounds
Offline Though I'd share this.
One of my uncles was diagnosed with liver failure several months ago. The condition was brought on by Hepatitus C & several severe bouts of malaria contracted during a relativley short space of time while he was farming in Malawi. (The family farm in Zimbabwe having been taken off him by my preferred hate figure.)
The rigours of cutting a new farm out of the bush in Malawi having proven too much for him and his family, they moved to his wife's home town of Toronto.
When he was diagnosed, the 3 options were;
- Die
- Wait for a recently deceased, matching, donor liver;
- Find a live, matching, donor willing to put themselves through major surgery.
Within our side of the family, 2 matches were found; my sister and one of our cousins - my uncle has a rarer blood type. The cousin was out of the running from the word go as he is still in Zimbabwe where the lack of post-op care would have likely killed him. My sister stepped up immeadiatley, but as the logistics angle of her being donor was getting worked out (she's here in the UK,) a member of my uncle's wife's family in Canada came forward, got tested/assessed and was found to be a physical and psychological match.
The op was carried out last week & both donor & recipient are going from strength to strength.
Am blown away by the generosity the donor has shown. He has stepped up and given someone he knows their life back at significant risk to himself, not to mention an 8-week recovery period that will be uncomfortable to say the least.
I have no idea what the donor's religious stance is - I've only ever spoken to him once (about 4 hours after he woke up from surgery, surreal.) He makes no mention of any theistic motivation on his blog,* but to be perfectly honest I could not give a shit.
Altruism is alive & well in Canada.
*Blog not linked to - currently contains phone numbers & email addresses that I'd rather not share. Whilst the bulk of the RRS' membership & audience come across as honourable people, am erring on the side of caution by assuming there's a dickhead in every crowd.
Stop that... It's silly.
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Great story. Thanks.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare
With all due respect to Ayn Rand all social species have behavior which can be described as altruism. I am not going into detailed examples of it but if you watch for it you can see it. Do not look for the kind of thing for which we give out hero medals. Just look for things where an individual is at risk to save another of the same pack, herd, clan, family, whatever.
Whether she knows it or not should she in the future need an organ transplant this action will put her higher on the list that without out it. There are a lot of factors which are considered in setting a patients priority and this is one of them.
Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.
www.ussliberty.org
www.giwersworld.org/made-in-alexandria/index.html
www.giwersworld.org/00_files/zion-hit-points.phtml
With all due respect, while this is marginally acquainted with Rand, objectivism and rational self-interest, I believe you completely miss the point and intent of the original post. We are all well aware of the various species in the world that exhibit kin selection and altruistic tendencies, I've posted dozens of threads on exactly that in my science and evolution forums.
Must we always be so fucking snide and serious? The OP was obviously simply sharing a very human story they experienced, not asking you to dissect it.
I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world. - Richard Dawkins
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Since we are doing a lot of respecting around here let me offer mine to you. I should have been more clear.
People are ranked for transplants. It is not a first come, first served basis. A long time ago (meaning I can't quote exactly any longer) I read the criteria for the ranking. There were the expected medical criteria such that a 90 year old needing a new heart is not going to get ranked very high. Nor is an alcoholic who can't stop going to get a liver nor a smoker new lungs unless he stops. Those were all the rational kinds of things we would expect.
What surprised me was an entire social category of criteria. The bigger your family and the more people who depend upon you the higher the score. Maybe that is reasonable but divorce ends it all.
Then there were points for essentially community service. With a place for special actions showing character including being an organ donor.
My point was not just that altruism exists but that far from being an abstract in this area it is quantified and donating an organ is quantified.
Altruism with a scorecard. Only in America!
Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.
www.ussliberty.org
www.giwersworld.org/made-in-alexandria/index.html
www.giwersworld.org/00_files/zion-hit-points.phtml
The time between diagnosis & transplant in my uncle's case was about 8 months. Much of that time was preparation; psychological tests, scans, bloods etc. He received his pager (in case a recently deceased liver became available) about 2 months ago. At around the same time, my cousin stepped up and began his tests.
My uncle's op was prioritised. Reasons being;
A live donor liver was available;
His condition was not due to alcohol or unhealthy living;
He has 2 young kids;
As time passed, his condition deteriorated to the point where he was in & out of hospital to get his system scrubbed of the toxins his liver would normally have taken care of. Kinda like uber-dialysis. The intervals between these trips were lengthened by an extreme diet (think broccoli and a lot of it) but nevertheless, each time landed him in near critical condition and the odds were beginning to shorten some;
My aunt couldn't handle the smell (kidding, but all that broccoli...? It must have been dire.)
All that considered, he was not top of the list for the OR time - the op was delayed by a couple of days so the surgical teams could deal with a higher priority case.
Interesting point;
Had the review board and the surgeons had the slightest shred of doubt as to my cousin's survival, they would have called the whole thing off in an instant - the programme operates under the somewhat damoclean sword that if a live donor dies as a result of their surgery, the entire live donor programme may well be cancelled.
An observation;
Self sacrifice to save another is held by many atheists and christian theists alike to be about the most moral thing someone can do, but we will all still try to ensure it doesn't happen.
Stop that... It's silly.