Summary Of Barry Schwartz's Unnatural Selections

John Harris proposes a hypothetical society where people’s organs are harvested based on a lottery system to save more lives at the cost of a few. The lottery would assign each person a number, and all the numbers would be put into a computer that randomly selects one of the numbers in the system. The person selected would then have their organs harvested for the ones needing transplants.

It doesn’t make sense for people to die unnecessarily if there is a way to easily save their lives. Author of "Organ Sales Will Save Lives" Joanna Mackay seems to agree. In her essay, she argues that the government should regulate organ sales, rather than ban them. In "Organ Sales Will Save Lives" Mackay uses facts and statistics to reveal shocking numbers to the audience dealing with the long and lengthy waitlist for an organ, as well as how many patients have passed annually due to end-stage renal disease. Mackay also uses counterarguments in pieces of her essay to relive any doubts or questions they have to persuade them to take her opinion. The author also

Joy Victory 's "Need an Organ? It Helps to Be Rich" provides great factual evidence to support her main claim that the rich have more advantages for acquiring an organ than do the poor and uninsured. The extensive factual evidence includes a personal account of an uninsured organ candidate, statistics and multiple expert testimonies to indicate that many variables hinder the poor and uninsured from receiving an organ. One of the most important variables is the socio-economic status of the potential organ recipient because statistics and evidence indicate receiving organs is determined primarily on a financial basis. Also, the article suggests the uninsured and poor not only suffer from physical ailments but also from a lack of hope for obtaining an organ. One of the ways Victory uses factual evidence is by narrating a personal account of an uninsured 34- year-old who is not only suffering physically but also suffering from a lack of hope for obtaining an organ. Brian Regions, the uninsured 34- year-old, is physically in agony every day with congestive heart failure and is consistently facing insufficient health care (Victory 736). As Victory accurately points out, Regions is not the only uninsured individual who is at risk for his expensive physical problems. It is also reported that there are thousands of others who are in physical agony with incurable heart damage (Victory 736). Without future heart support and financial intervention, Regions and many others may

The article “Need an Organ? It Helps to be Rich,” by Joy Victory informs readers of how medical systems work for those who are in need of an organ transplant. In the article, Victory talks about a 34-year-old man named Brian Shane Regions - who is in need of a heart transplant, but is not able to secure one because he is not insured. Therefore, not having insurance, Brian is put into an unfortunate situation because he is simply not getting any treatment for his heart failure. This is a great example of how patients without insurance could not be provided with an organ donor. Victory argues a variety of issues concerning how the organ donation system is unfair to certain people. A transplant cost a bundle amount of money, which leads to the rich only able to have the procedure done. While the poor cannot afford the cost of the transplant, creating an unfair situation for the less fortunate. The transplant centers can do anything as they please because they simply care more about the money. However, not all transplant centers treat their patients unfairly, several centers are truly able to support the uninsured patients in need of a transplant. It is simply unfair for the patients, who do not have enough money to pay for transplant and the medical systems are unethical.

In this paper I will be using the normative theory of utilitarianism as the best defensible approach to increase organ donations. Utilitarianism is a theory that seeks to increase the greatest good for the greatest amount of people (Pense2007, 61). The utilitarian theory is the best approach because it maximizes adult organ donations (which are the greater good) so that the number of lives saved would increase along with the quality of life, and also saves money and time.

The notion of choice in an individual’s life is subject to constant questioning. We have what we like to call the freedom of decision-making, but often it simply seems like a facade. Many believe that one’s morals and ethics are solely responsible for the decisions they make, major or minor. Others attribute the external pressures surrounding them and societal factors as the facilitator of choices. Unquestionably, both personal characteristics and societal factors influence the the majority of choices of individuals everywhere. We must consider, however, that one plats more of a role than the other. Pieces of writing such as Christopher Browning’s Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, Michael Bess’ Choices Under Fire: Moral Dimensions of World War II, and Milton Mayer’s No Time to Think explore the idea of both influential aspects. Nonetheless, more influence can be attributed to societal factors and this idea is supported throughout all of the pieces of writing. Societal factors, for the most part, are composed of a plethora of external pressures that we either actively acquiesce to or subconsciously conform to. Societal factors play a much larger role for the average individual in regards to decision-making and this goes for individuals of all backgrounds and beliefs. This is shown in the lives of the Chambonnais, the Reserve Police Battalion, and the two famous experiments known as the Milgram Experiment and the Stanford Prison

The article, “Unnatural Selections” by Barry Schwartz is an inspirational article that shows us all of the default choices that we take for granted in this world. He uses several examples to help give you the overall impression of the article. Along with the examples, Barry creates logic and emotion by the writing style he uses. He creates logic and emotion in his article by using persuasive elements such as evidence and reasoning. Barry Schwartz is a highly known professor of psychology, and has written several books. Therefore, we can be convinced that we are able to trust him as an author. He makes valid points and he does a magnificent job of persuading the readers into believing what he says with his examples.

England currently practices an opt-in system of organ donation. The waiting list for organ donor transplants exceeds 10,000 meaning that people are losing their lives everyday due to a shortage of donor organs. It has been suggested for a while that England adopts the opt-out system, in order to increase donation rates and decrease the number of people dying whilst waiting for an organ transplant. This systematic review aims to present the different ethical arguments supporting a change of organ donation system to opting-out instead of opting-in.

That is why M.R.I.’s are generally used for women with high-risk of breast cancer, even though it does give better results than mammograms. That is where his logic and reasoning influence the reader about default

Analysis Paper Rough Draft The author of Why Legalizing Organ Sales Would Help to Save Lives, End Violence Anthony Gregory, uses many different tools of proving his argument throughout the story. Although Gregory's angle of vision doesn’t see how legalizing organs can negatively effect people his use of logical appeal, not having any fallacies, and credible evidence credits his argument making it more effective. Gregory's angle of vision doesn’t see how it can negatively effect people. He doesn’t see that if legalizing organ sales would benefit the wealthy, leaving the poor to sacrifice their own health.

Judith Jarvis Thompson’s thought experiment explores the thought process behind utilitarian and deontological intuitions in relation to medical ethics. In the original thought experiment, a surgeon is presented with an opportunity to save his patients by killing a healthy individual. The reader is then asked to decide what the surgeon should do. If the reader choses to go through with the transplants, they have utilitarian intuitions. We can explain their utilitarian leanings on account of their decision to sacrifice an unsuspecting healthy individual in order to save the five patients. On the other hand, if the reader decided not to go through with the transplants, they would be displaying deontological intuitions because they believe killing is morally wrong, even if it were to produce good consequences. As we can see, there are too many unknown factors in Thompson’s thought experiment for it to truly predict an individual’s intuitions. Through several modifications aimed at eliminating confounds, I will demonstrate how the thought experiment created by Thompson can be revised to provide an unbiased representation of the deontological and utilitarian intuitions displayed by the reader. This paper will also demonstrate why we can predict the West’s general trend of leaning towards deontological intuitions.

John Harris proposes an interesting thought experiment about organ transplant. He comes up with the idea of a “survival lottery”. Harris argues that the survival lottery will improve society and by the utilitarian theory, produce the most good for the most amount of people. However, Harris does not take into account that the survival lottery will impinge on other people’s moral rights and thus invalidate his thought experiment. Harris starts off his thought experiment by saying what if patients Y and Z need organ transplants and they argue that they have just as much of a right to life as anyone else does and it is not their fault that they had the misfortune of organ failure.

When it comes to choice it always seems to be a love hate relationship: we hate making them, but we can’t live without them. Anyone can all look back to a time in our lives where they wish someone could just pick for us, or times when we wish there were more to choose from. All Americans have many choices, and it is such a part of our daily lives that we don’t even realize it. Barry Schwartz and Sheena Iyengar‘s TED talks bring up interesting ideas about choice, how people deal with them and their affects. They both state that although choice is good, it can also have negative effects. Schwartz explains what most people believe and experience with choice, while Iyengar shows cultural differences in choice making. Both Schwartz and Iyengar

Barry Schwartz uses evidence about default choices in this article to make his point. He mentions studies on organ donation, insurance policies and 401ks, all referring back to default choices. The author talks about how organ donation is not a default choice in America causing lower percentages of donors. In almost all of the studies percentages are given. For example, he states that 90% of

Every day, 20 people die because they are unable to receive a vital organ transplant that they need to survive. Some of these people are on organ donation lists and some of them are not. The poor and minorities are disproportionately represented among those who do not receive the organs they need. In the United States alone, nearly 116,000 people are on waiting lists for vital organ transplants. Another name is added to this list every 10 minutes. This paper will argue that organ donation should not be optional. Every person who dies, or enters an irreversible vegetative state with little or no brain function, should have his or her organs-more specifically, those among the organs that are suitable for donation-harvested. A single healthy donor who has died can save up to eight lives (American Transplant Foundation).