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Author: Sally L. Satel
Publisher: A E I Press
Published: 2008
Total Pages: 0
ISBN-13: 9780844742663
DOWNLOAD EBOOKWhen Altruism Isn't Enough explores the key ethical, theoretical, and practical concerns of a government-regulated donor compensation program.
Author: Andrew Michael Flescher
Publisher: Georgetown University Press
Published: 2018
Total Pages: 188
ISBN-13: 1626165440
DOWNLOAD EBOOKNearly 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.
Author: William MacAskill
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2015-07-28
Total Pages: 288
ISBN-13: 0698191102
DOWNLOAD EBOOKMost 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.
Author: Peter Singer
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2015-04-07
Total Pages: 228
ISBN-13: 0300182414
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAn 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.
Author: Charles Daniel Batson
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 2016
Total Pages: 273
ISBN-13: 0199355541
DOWNLOAD EBOOKMost 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?
Author: Kieran Healy
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2010-08-15
Total Pages: 208
ISBN-13: 0226322386
DOWNLOAD EBOOKMore 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.
Author: David Sloan Wilson
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2015-01-01
Total Pages: 190
ISBN-13: 0300189494
DOWNLOAD EBOOKArgues that altruism is an inherent factor of group functionality and discusses how studying group function can promote positive changes to the human condition.
Author: Institute of Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
Published: 2006-08-24
Total Pages: 358
ISBN-13: 0309164648
DOWNLOAD EBOOKRates 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.
Author: Peter Singer
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Published: 2010
Total Pages: 242
ISBN-13: 0812981561
DOWNLOAD EBOOKArgues that for the first time in history we're in a position to end extreme poverty throughout the world, both because of our unprecedented wealth and advances in technology, therefore we can no longer consider ourselves good people unless we give more to the poor. Reprint.
Author: Edmund S. Phelps
Publisher: Russell Sage Foundation
Published: 1975-05-21
Total Pages: 243
ISBN-13: 1610446798
DOWNLOAD EBOOKPresents a collection of papers by economists theorizing on the roles of altruism and morality versus self-interest in the shaping of human behavior and institutions. Specifically, the authors examine why some persons behave in an altruistic way without any apparent reward, thus defying the economist's model of utility maximization. The chapters are accompanied by commentaries from representatives of other disciplines, including law and philosophy.
