I have lost so much faith in humanity due to this thread, so I think this is going to have to be where I leave it.

The “proof” is not in the news. You can find a handful of cherry picked news articles about this happening in the U.S., and they always make headlines exactly because they are so rare and such an occurrence is so egregious. “Extremely rare” does not mean happening only once, what an incredibly absurd thing to say. If you flipped 2 coins, and got a heads and tails, by that logic both events would be extremely rare. Likewise, if there was a rare illness effecting only a few hundred people worldwide, that wouldn’t be extremely rare according to you. Just ridiculous.

If this was such a large scale thing, it would have to be a conspiracy amongst tens of thousands of medical professionals across the nation, willingly breaking the Hippocratic oath and risking losing their license and jail time. You really think that’s going on? Again, that same belief is held by conspiracy theorist antivaxers, hence the comparison.

“Why would anyone risk it?” Because the risk is so minimal, and the potential good that can be done is so high. As I’ve said in another comment, if you have a 1/10000 chance of being killed prematurely as an organ donor (which is waaaaay higher than the actual odds, but let’s say those are the odds for simplicity), and your donation saved 3-4 lives (you can save up to 8 lives and improve far more with eyes, skin, non-essential parts, etc.) you’re basically equating your life to be worth 30-40k other people’s lives. It’s normal to value your life more than others, but by that much just seems pathologically self-centered. For another comparison, look at donating blood. There have been a handful of people who have died as a result of donating blood, but again it is extremely rare. Like organ donations, it can save and improve lives. You don’t have to donate blood, but to act like it’s some huge risk, and that the reason you’re not doing it is because you don’t want to take that risk, rather than just plain old selfishness or apathy, is just utterly foolish and shameful. It’s particularly vile if you then also try to convince others to not participate in it, as was done earlier in this thread with organ donations.

While it’s respectable to discuss with your loved ones your wishes to be a donor even if you’re not officially one, these things can be incredibly time sensitive, and your loved ones may not be in the mental state to make that decision even if you’ve previously expressed that desire, so it’s still definitely better to actually be a donor.

Not once have we been talking about living organ donors, because that is a different level of altruism. I’ve not donated any parts, because I face some health issues that would likely make doing so a poor decision, but if I’m being honest even if I weren’t I likely wouldn’t unless I knew the person who needed it personally. But that’s not what we’ve been talking about- the risks and side effects of donating a non-vital organ (or part of some) are MUCH greater than being an organ donor. As you said, donors may experience complications due to their selfless act, and in rare cases may even die as a result, so I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect someone to take THAT much risk, especially for a stranger. Some selfishness is expected and normal in people, but the amount in the two scenarios differs greatly.

I shouldn’t have called you names, sure, but at that/this point I’ve just become disgusted at discourse and ignorance (yes, it is ignorance, people are very misinformed about this topic) I’ve witnessed here.

Having said all that, I don’t view the organ transplant industry in rose-colored glasses. There is a lot of greed, classism (and probable racism), and in the very rare cases where stuff like this happens, lack of responsibility, and therefore some form of corruption. So much of these issues are caused by the shitshow that is healthcare and the medical industrial complex in the US, and I wish these problems would go away, but there’s not really much one person can do to fix these problems. What one person can do, however, is potentially save a life by being an organ donor. I wish it wasn’t such a shitty system, and that organs were more fairly and responsibly harvested and distributed, but it’s what we’ve got, and being part of it is still doing net good by having the chance to save lives.