Spin
An excerpt from an opinion piece in
Remove hurdles in way of living organ donors(Khalik, Salma. The Straits Times [Singapore] 23 June 2009: A2.)
No medical entitlement and no insurance act as deterrents
Singapore wants more people to come forward to donate an organ to their loved ones who are suffering from either liver or kidney failure.
To encourage this, the laws are going to be amended to allow recipients to reimburse living organ donors.
[ . . . ]
This is where government help would be greatly appreciated.
Donors should not need to worry about their jobs during the period of convalescence or have to rush back to work before they are fully fit.
Women are given legislated paid leave when they give birth. Men do not need to tap into their own leave when called up for reservist duty.
In both cases, what they do is seen to be in the national interest, and companies provide them with mandated time off without penalty.
So too should donors be treated, since what they do saves a life, and is certainly in line with the national good.
Giving organ donors three months paid leave — the same that women get for childbirth — would be only fair.
The moral calculus hawked here:
Donating organs = national / social interest.
Serving conscripted military / paramilitary obligations = national / social interest + duty.
Giving birth to
The implied message in the final paragraph (of the excerpt) is a scream:
Childbirth is as patriotic and altruistic as organ donation.
I'll leave the puns to you :-P
A quote from Agagooga:
To read a newspaper is to refrain from reading something worthwhile. The first discipline of education must therefore be to refuse resolutely to feed the mind with canned chatter.(Aleister Crowley)
posted by -ben | 1:03 PM
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