I will not be donating any organs–please spend the money that would have gone to those transplants on preventive care for the uninsured instead, OK? “An individual act of organ donation may prolong the lives of six individuals on the transplant waiting list,” writes Jennifer Girod, a bioethicist and former intensive care nurse, in Second Opinion (December). But the donation costs the health-care system plenty: “The first year costs for the hospital charges, physician fees, and medication are approximately $253,000 for the heart, $314,900 for the liver, $271,000 for each lung, and $116,000 for each kidney.” Thus “the donor commits others to spend well over $1 million in short-term surgical and medical costs and $130,000 in follow-up costs each succeeding year, barring complications….If several people in an insurance plan receive transplants each year costing several million dollars, the insurance company must either raise premiums or provide fewer services for other beneficiaries.”
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“Looking at the historical record, it is difficult to make the argument that our ‘depletable’ fuels–coal, petroleum, and natural gas–are in fact being depleted in any real economic sense,” writes Brian Mannix in the Heartland Institute’s “Environment & Climate News” (March). “Proven oil reserves worldwide stood at 68 billion barrels in 1947. In the ensuing 41 years, we used 783 billion barrels…and wound up with more than a trillion barrels in proven reserves in 1998. World reserves of natural gas were about one quadrillion cubic feet in 1966; since then, we have used almost two quadrillion, and we have more than five quadrillion left. World coal reserves were 256 billion short tons in 1949; we have used 168 billion of that, and still had more than a trillion short tons left in 1998.” What to do with the carbon in them is another story, but at least we aren’t in danger of running out.
