When Altruism Isn't Enough

When Altruism Isn't Enough PDF Author: Sally L. Satel
Publisher: A E I Press
ISBN: 9780844742663
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
When Altruism Isn't Enough explores the key ethical, theoretical, and practical concerns of a government-regulated donor compensation program.

When Altruism Isn't Enough

When Altruism Isn't Enough PDF Author: Sally L. Satel
Publisher: A E I Press
ISBN: 9780844742663
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
When Altruism Isn't Enough explores the key ethical, theoretical, and practical concerns of a government-regulated donor compensation program.

The Organ Donor Experience

The Organ Donor Experience PDF Author: Katrina Bramstedt
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442211156
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description
Despite starting slowly with some academic jargon about altruism and people's motivations to donate organs, the book quickly takes a right turn and gets interesting. The authors sprinkle little informative tidbits along the way-Asian-Americans constituted only 3.4% of U.S. donors-and bring their points alive through little vignettes when examining the origins of altruism. The authors would make brilliant sales reps: they put forth a convincing argument about what a great humanitarian effort living donation is then patiently explain the evaluation process to reassure readers of the minimal costs. The few downsides are reviewed and discussed-for example, how to deal with family members who do not support the decision to donate or the devastation donors might experience when a recipient dies. Resources, bibliography, and index occupy a full 36 pages, yet for the most part this book escapes the drudgery of a research-laden study and instead reads as a fascinating story about a very human issue. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Last Best Gifts

Last Best Gifts PDF Author: Kieran Healy
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226322386
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
More than any other altruistic gesture, blood and organ donation exemplifies the true spirit of self-sacrifice. Donors literally give of themselves for no reward so that the life of an individual—often anonymous—may be spared. But as the demand for blood and organs has grown, the value of a system that depends solely on gifts has been called into question, and the possibility has surfaced that donors might be supplemented or replaced by paid suppliers. Last Best Gifts offers a fresh perspective on this ethical dilemma by examining the social organization of blood and organ donation in Europe and the United States. Gifts of blood and organs are not given everywhere in the same way or to the same extent—contrasts that allow Kieran Healy to uncover the pivotal role that institutions play in fashioning the contexts for donations. Procurement organizations, he shows, sustain altruism by providing opportunities to give and by producing public accounts of what giving means. In the end, Healy suggests, successful systems rest on the fairness of the exchange, rather than the purity of a donor’s altruism or the size of a financial incentive.

Doing Good Better

Doing Good Better PDF Author: William MacAskill
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0698191102
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
Most of us want to make a difference. We donate our time and money to charities and causes we deem worthy, choose careers we consider meaningful, and patronize businesses and buy products we believe make the world a better place. Unfortunately, we often base these decisions on assumptions and emotions rather than facts. As a result, even our best intentions often lead to ineffective—and sometimes downright harmful—outcomes. How can we do better? While a researcher at Oxford, trying to figure out which career would allow him to have the greatest impact, William MacAskill confronted this problem head on. He discovered that much of the potential for change was being squandered by lack of information, bad data, and our own prejudice. As an antidote, he and his colleagues developed effective altruism, a practical, data-driven approach that allows each of us to make a tremendous difference regardless of our resources. Effective altruists believe that it’s not enough to simply do good; we must do good better. At the core of this philosophy are five key questions that help guide our altruistic decisions: How many people benefit, and by how much? Is this the most effective thing I can do? Is this area neglected? What would have happened otherwise? What are the chances of success, and how good would success be? By applying these questions to real-life scenarios, MacAskill shows how many of our assumptions about doing good are misguided. For instance, he argues one can potentially save more lives by becoming a plastic surgeon rather than a heart surgeon; measuring overhead costs is an inaccurate gauge of a charity’s effectiveness; and, it generally doesn’t make sense for individuals to donate to disaster relief. MacAskill urges us to think differently, set aside biases, and use evidence and careful reasoning rather than act on impulse. When we do this—when we apply the head and the heart to each of our altruistic endeavors—we find that each of us has the power to do an astonishing amount of good.

The Organ Shortage Crisis in America

The Organ Shortage Crisis in America PDF Author: Andrew Michael Flescher
Publisher: Georgetown University Press
ISBN: 1626165440
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 188

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Book Description
Nearly 120,000 people are in need of healthy organs in the United States.. Every ten minutes a new name is added to this list, while each day eight people die waiting for an organ to become available. Worse, the gap between those in need of an organ and the number of available donors is growing: our traditional reliance on cadaveric organ donation is insufficient, and in recent years there has been a decline in the number of living donors as well as in the percentage of living donors relative to overall kidney donors. Some transplant surgeons and policy advocates suggest a market solution and legalizing the sale of organs, Andrew Michael Flescher objects to this approach, citing concerns about social justice, commodification, and patient safety. Given that, what is the most efficacious means of attracting prospective living kidney donors? Flescher, drawing on scores of interviews with donors and patients, suggests that inculcating a sense of altruism and civic duty is a more effective means of increasing donor participation than purely financial incentives. He encourages individuals to spend time with patients on dialysis, advocating donor "chains" in order to facilitate relationships between donors and recipients, and creating sacred spaces in hospitals such as a "wall of heroes" to recognize those who sacrifice their body parts for others.

The Most Good You Can Do

The Most Good You Can Do PDF Author: Peter Singer
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300182414
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
An argument for putting sentiment aside and maximizing the practical impact of our donated dollars: “Powerful, provocative” (Nicholas Kristof, The New York Times). Peter Singer’s books and ideas have been disturbing our complacency ever since the appearance of Animal Liberation. Now he directs our attention to a challenging new movement in which his own ideas have played a crucial role: effective altruism. Effective altruism is built upon the simple but profoundly unsettling idea that living a fully ethical life involves doing the “most good you can do.” Such a life requires a rigorously unsentimental view of charitable giving: to be a worthy recipient of our support, an organization must be able to demonstrate that it will do more good with our money or our time than other options open to us. Singer introduces us to an array of remarkable people who are restructuring their lives in accordance with these ideas, and shows how, paradoxically, living altruistically often leads to greater personal fulfillment than living for oneself. Doing the Most Good develops the challenges Singer has made, in the New York Times and Washington Post, to those who donate to the arts, and to charities focused on helping our fellow citizens, rather than those for whom we can do the most good. Effective altruists are extending our knowledge of the possibilities of living less selfishly, and of allowing reason, rather than emotion, to determine how we live. Doing the Most Good offers new hope for our ability to tackle the world’s most pressing problems.

What's Wrong with Morality?

What's Wrong with Morality? PDF Author: Charles Daniel Batson
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199355541
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Most works on moral psychology consider morality an unalloyed good. Drawing primarily on social-psychological theory and research, this book looks at morality as a problem. The problem is that we often fail live up to our own moral standards. Why?

The Scout Mindset

The Scout Mindset PDF Author: Julia Galef
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0735217556
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
"...an engaging and enlightening account from which we all can benefit."—The Wall Street Journal A better way to combat knee-jerk biases and make smarter decisions, from Julia Galef, the acclaimed expert on rational decision-making. When it comes to what we believe, humans see what they want to see. In other words, we have what Julia Galef calls a "soldier" mindset. From tribalism and wishful thinking, to rationalizing in our personal lives and everything in between, we are driven to defend the ideas we most want to believe—and shoot down those we don't. But if we want to get things right more often, argues Galef, we should train ourselves to have a "scout" mindset. Unlike the soldier, a scout's goal isn't to defend one side over the other. It's to go out, survey the territory, and come back with as accurate a map as possible. Regardless of what they hope to be the case, above all, the scout wants to know what's actually true. In The Scout Mindset, Galef shows that what makes scouts better at getting things right isn't that they're smarter or more knowledgeable than everyone else. It's a handful of emotional skills, habits, and ways of looking at the world—which anyone can learn. With fascinating examples ranging from how to survive being stranded in the middle of the ocean, to how Jeff Bezos avoids overconfidence, to how superforecasters outperform CIA operatives, to Reddit threads and modern partisan politics, Galef explores why our brains deceive us and what we can do to change the way we think.

Organ Donation

Organ Donation PDF Author: Institute of Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309164648
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 358

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Book Description
Rates of organ donation lag far behind the increasing need. At the start of 2006, more than 90,000 people were waiting to receive a solid organ (kidney, liver, lung, pancreas, heart, or intestine). Organ Donation examines a wide range of proposals to increase organ donation, including policies that presume consent for donation as well as the use of financial incentives such as direct payments, coverage of funeral expenses, and charitable contributions. This book urges federal agencies, nonprofit groups, and others to boost opportunities for people to record their decisions to donate, strengthen efforts to educate the public about the benefits of organ donation, and continue to improve donation systems. Organ Donation also supports initiatives to increase donations from people whose deaths are the result of irreversible cardiac failure. This book emphasizes that all members of society have a stake in an adequate supply of organs for patients in need, because each individual is a potential recipient as well as a potential donor.

Does Altruism Exist?

Does Altruism Exist? PDF Author: David Sloan Wilson
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300189494
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 190

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Book Description
Argues that altruism is an inherent factor of group functionality and discusses how studying group function can promote positive changes to the human condition.