Racist kidneys and livers?

[PeterGustafsson]

Hi!


I just saw a few seconds of talkshow here, and the topic was on transplants. I probably missed most of the important stuff, but it made me remember a thing I read in the paper a long time ago.

In Sweden, a few years ago a donor card was sent out to every citizen. It hade three choices - donate everything, donate some organs (specify which), and no donations. Some people appearently informed doctors that their choice was: donate everything, but only to people of their own race. The doctor interviewed in the paper stated that such a wish would not be honored, and in that case the organs would not be harvested, even if they were in good medical shape and the only medically possible recipient would be a person of the same race.

I find that a waste. If some racist is willing to donate his organs, then a donation according to his wish should lessen the competition for people of other races once the next batch of organs comes around.

The article also stated that the occupational health&safety situation, and the motorcyclist´s use of helmets, were so good in Sweden so that there was a real lack of organs. His colleagues in places with bad driving culture had much more to work with, so to say.


What is your take on it?

[ReverseLunge]

Only another black man deserves to inherit my penis but I do wonder how it would look on a white man.

[Zilverzmurfen]

Only another black man deserves to inherit my penis but I do wonder how it would look on a white man.

I'm sure Michael Jackson would know something about that...

[RebelFencer]

I just think it'd be great to be able to say: "Inside this white man, beats the heart of a black man."

[esskreemr]

If someone wants to take their ignorance and hatred to the grave with them, well, it's their body. At least they donated.

[jBirch]

Shouldn't be an issue. Give their organs to those who satisfy their stipulations. If no such donor exists, or if a recipient needs one significantly more then the person that satisfies the race condition, give it to the recepient whose need is most dire. The executor of the estate is the person most capable to make the decision if there is any significant question as to where the organ should go.

This all assumes that people making the racial stipulations are significantly in the minority. If not, then the problem is a lot more complicated.

James.

[scrapinpeg]

You have racists in Sweden? What other races do you have there?

[Moses]

You have racists in Sweden? What other races do you have there?

Hundreds of them! Ya know, blondes and.... dirty blondes.



It brings up memories of my former school's soccer and rugby coach. He's from Ireland and he'd tell me about playing and coaching in Europe and how whenever he played the Nordic teams it felt he was playing an army of clones.

He said watching them come off the plane was like viewing the end of an assembly line.

And so he moved to America. Good times. ^_^

-Da Mose

[PeterGustafsson]

Hi!


I did a bit of websearching around this topic, and found out the the medical authorities at least are consistent.

In Sweden, sperm donation is highly legally regulated. Up until July 1st it was only legal if the recipient was a woman in a marriage or stable relation with a man, but now those in a stable lesbian relation are also eligble. Here come the legal problems. Since the paper that the donor signs specifies that he gives consent to donation to the women-with-men, then the sperm available now is not legally useful to lesbian women. They are going to get around that by contacting existing donors to get their consent for lesbian recipients, and modifying the donor form so that it states consent for use on all women with partners.

The leader of the largest gay/lesbian political group is incensed about this, and demands that the sperm presently frozen should be made available to lesbians right away, claiming that any donor who would condition a donation on the basis of recipient´s race, creed, etc. would not be accepted.

OTOH, the pressure group of the infertile couples has demanded a donor form where the donor can specify whether he accepts lesbian recipients or not, in order to stop the supply from drying up, so to say. Many doctors are appearently wary of donors stopping, and demanding that their samples are destroyed, unless such an opt-out clause is not added. That happened several years ago when the law was changed so that the donor´s identity would be revealed to the child once the child was 18 years old, if the child asked.

The law appears to be going against an opt-out clause, either accept lesbian recipents or nothing. The legal framework has been drawn up by a legal candidate whose name is:

Pål Resare

If you know Swedish, you will understad which smiley to apply. If you don´t - ask Zilverzmurfen, I am too embarrassed to explain!


Have a nice time!

Peter Gustafsson

[PeterGustafsson]

Hi!

You have racists in Sweden? What other races do you have there?

Racists are everywhere. Some stats that I have read in various places:
Sweden has 9 million people, and almost 90% of those eligble to vote do so. Sweden has two racist parties, one racist-lite and the other a white-supremacist party. Neither got any parliament seats, but the racism-lite party got some 20 or so seats in the local councils of about 15000-20000 places around the country. They both got significantly less than 1% of the popular vote.

So, who are they angry about:

Sweden has:
Close to a million people with "foreign heritage" either born outside of Sweden or at least one parent who is so.
Several hundred thousand people with background in the muslim countries.
A few ten´s of thousands of people from the non-muslim asian countries
Well over 100,000 people of Nordic descent, mainly Finnish
15,000 Sami people in the far north
18,000 Jews
6,000 Romani
over 50,000 people from the various parts of former Jugoslavia (my data are old, could be many more)
over 20,000 people from Turkey
Miscellaneous groups: Chileans, sub-saharan Africa, relatively small groups from all over the world.

So, there are others to gripe about, provided that one is of racist bent.


Have a nice time!

Peter Gustafsson

[Epee_Pox]

>>>Sweden has:
Close to a million people with "foreign heritage" either born outside of Sweden or at least one parent who is so.

...but this says nothing about their race. How many of these are not caucasians?

>>>Several hundred thousand people with background in the muslim countries.

...arabs are caucasians.

>>>A few ten´s of thousands of people from the non-muslim asian countries

...out of a population of 9 million, this is a few tenths of a percent of the population. Not a significant number.

>>>Well over 100,000 people of Nordic descent, mainly Finnish

...a bunch of white people.

>>>15,000 Sami people in the far north

...a few more white people. 1.6/10 of 1% of the population

>>>18,000 Jews

...some more white people. 2/10 of 1%

>>>6,000 Romani

...a handful of white people. 6/100 of 1%

>>>over 50,000 people from the various parts of former Jugoslavia (my data are old, could be many more)

...yet more white people. 5.5/10 of 1%

>>>over 20,000 people from Turkey

...some more caucasians. 2.2/10 of 1%

>>>Miscellaneous groups: Chileans, sub-saharan Africa, relatively small groups from all over the world.

... tiny numbers of non-caucasians, apparently too few to count.

>>>So, there are others to gripe about, provided that one is of racist bent.

... but barely enough to mention.

[Have At You]

Since when is judaism a race? I always thought it was a religion. I know white jews, black jews, and even some chinese jews. If you're gonna list them as a race, why not list christians, hindus, etc?

I get the sense that when they say "race" in sweden, they really mean "ethnicity," "nationality," or "culture," (rather than whether someone is white/black/east asian/central asian/aboriginal/melanesian/inuit/north american indian/south american indian/south asian/etc...)

[PeterGustafsson]

Hi!

Since when is judaism a race? I always thought it was a religion. I know white jews, black jews, and even some chinese jews. If you're gonna list them as a race, why not list christians, hindus, etc?

I listed jews since racists often hate them. I also followed the breakdown listed in the statistics book I happen to have right beside me.

A religious breakdown would be: lots of atheists and agnostics, some tepid christians, very few believing christians (the only openly christian party had to tone down its religious message a lot to get over 4% and get into the parliament), a significant percentage of the people from muslim countries being fairly serious about it, some new-agey people (especially among middle-aged women, for some reason), and sprinklings of others.

I think I have seen a stat claiming that of the nominally christian people in Sweden, the average churchgoing is considerably less than 5 services/year.

I get the sense that when they say "race" in sweden, they really mean "ethnicity," "nationality," or "culture," (rather than whether someone is white/black/east asian/central asian/aboriginal/melanesian/inuit/north american indian/south american indian/south asian/etc...)

While the people of foreign heritage a comparatively few in Sweden, they are common in those places that they live - there are several high-rise suburbs to the 3 largest cities where they are several tens of percentage points of the population. There is a highschool outside of Malmö with about 1% of the student body being of Swedish descent. Not surprisingly, those places are mostly "white spots" (no pun intended) on the Sw. fencing map.

The concept of race/ethnicity/nationality/culture is a perilous one, and I hope that I have not offended anyone with my writings.

When papers write about foreigners here, people from Northen Africa/Middle East/Indian subcontinent/South America/Central America usually get lumped together with non-caucasian people. Gives you a feel for the us/them division in this particular mental map.


Have a nice time!

Peter Gustafsson

[Epee_Pox]

That was enlightening, thanks for the info.

And I wasn't very clear with my breakdown before. I guess I was just pointing out that even if someone had made a racist bequest of their organs excluding non-whites, it was not statistically likely to have any effect.

[PeterGustafsson]

Hi!

That was enlightening, thanks for the info.

And I wasn't very clear with my breakdown before. I guess I was just pointing out that even if someone had made a racist bequest of their organs excluding non-whites, it was not statistically likely to have any effect.

Considering that there is no reason to assume that racist donors among non-whites are less common than among whites, the net effect will be neglible.


Have a nice time!

Peter Gustafsson

[latenight]

I guess one could argue that since harvesting organs is a cost to the medical system, that harvesting organs which may not be used due to race restrictions may not be a good choice financially. That having been said I think they are your organs...you can do what you want with them.

[Moses]

To be slightly off-topic...

The use of the term "Jew" in the context of ethnicity is an off-shoot of anti-Semitism (a hatred of the Semitic peoples, particularly Jews, of West Asia and Eastern Europe who share a common lingual history and have been popularly identified as belonging to the same ethnic group by racists). When Hitler sought the socio-economic isolation of the Jews (and their eventual extermination) he identified them as a specific race element, as opposed to a religious element. Jews were targetted based on their lifestyle or last name in addition to their religious practices (some of these "ethnic Jews" were not particularly religious, or had converted to other practices, but were lumped into the same group due to their ancestry or appearance).

The common feeling amongst many Jews that they are "a people" distinct from other ethnic groups (and the subdivision of this Jewish people along nationalistic lines, i.e. Ashkenazi Jews, Mizrahi Jews, etc.) furthers the conception of "Jew" as it's own ethnic group and is expressed in, say, the creation of the Israeli state.

So the use of the term "Jew" in the context of ethnic discrimination refers specifically to those people who were descended from Jewish immigrants from Western Asia (spread largely during the Roman Hegemony of West Asia and afterwards, including the Englightenment), regardless of their religion.

-Da Mose

[ReverseLunge]

We are not allowed to use the J word in this forum. I have been warned about using the J word by the admins.

[Boo Boo]

I wonder if those people who insist on specifying that their organs should only be donated to people of the same race, would also insist that only organs or blood transfusions donated to them were also only from white people (and refuse any from other races or where race could not be determined...)?

If we all looked the same and came from exactly the same cultures and backgrounds, this world would be far too boring!

Boo

[ReverseLunge]

I would only give my organs to someone of the same race and nationality.