Donate your organs and we’ll pay your funeral: New NHS plan to tackle shortage of volunteers

• 'Reasonable' funeral costs of between £1,500 and £5,000 could be met
• Report also recommends bigger payouts for egg and sperm donation in fertility treatment

 Organ donors should have their funeral expenses paid by the NHS, according to a proposal to encourage millions more to sign up to the register.

The desperate shortage of suitable transplant organs has left 8,000 people in the UK on a waiting list for a life-saving operation. And while it takes an average of three years for a suitable donor to become available, three people on the list die every day.

With a typical funeral costing thousands of pounds, the proposal for the NHS to pay ‘reasonable’ costs of between £1,500 and £5,000 could be an incentive for many to join the Organ Donor Register.

 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2047611/NHS-Donate-organs-pay-funeral-costs.html

1. SHOULD WE KILL HEALTHY PEOPLE FOR THEIR ORGANS?

Suppose Bill is a healthy man without family or loved ones. Would it be ok painlessly to kill him if his organs would save five people, one of whom needs a heart, another a kidney, and so on? If not, why not?

Consider another case: you and six others are kidnapped, and the kidnapper somehow persuades you that if you shoot dead one of the other hostages, he will set the remaining five free, whereas if you do not, he will shoot all six. (Either way, he'll release you.)

If in this case you should kill one to save five, why not in the previous, organs case? If in this case too you have qualms, consider yet another: you're in the cab of a runaway tram and see five people tied to the track ahead. You have the option of sending the tram on to the track forking off to the left, on which only one person is tied. Surely you should send the tram left, killing one to save five.

But then why not kill Bill?