what a dickhead

[zombie]

From the AMA site


Detroit columnist says injured motorcyclists shouldn’t be given medical treatment
Here we go again.

Columnist Brian Dickerson, in yesterday’s edition of the Detroit Free Press, is the latest to call for motorcyclists to be de-facto organ donors. What’s worse, he suggests that injured motorcyclists not be given medical treatment at all.

In writing about the pending repeal of Michigan’s mandatory helmet law, Dickerson says, “If only lawmakers had thought to add a requirement that all helmet-less cyclists agree to donate their organs. And why not require donorcyclists to sign papers declining extraordinary lifesaving measures, so that deserving organ recipients aren't kept waiting unnecessarily?”

Dickerson doesn’t stop there. He lumps motorcyclists in with “champions of the right to die,” including shameless and insulting references to Jack Kevorkian and Terri Schiavo.

We’ve seen this sort of hysterical, uninformed opinion before, of course. Last September, Chicago Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg characterized riders as organ donors in a column headlined "Hop on a motorcycle, fill out your donor card” -- and your e-mails to Mr. Steinberg prompted him to admit in a later column that he wrote without knowing the facts. Earlier, the AMA joined motorcyclists nationwide in defeating actual legislative proposals in New Mexico and California that would’ve required motorcyclists to be organ donors.

But by suggesting that injured motorcyclists be left to die, Dickerson has set an all-time low -- and the AMA has told him so. If you’d like to let him know how you feel, you can reach him at dicker@freepress.com.

© 2005, American Motorcyclist Association

[RandyO]

he should be an organ donor with the exception of his brain

[SEVENSGT]

I am an orgn donor, what's wrong with that, if I die and some kid can live with my lung then so be it, mandotory NO, but we all should be IMHO

[katana0215]

yeah, and I read the real article with a link from another forum, the article was nowhere close to as bad as the AMA made it sound. The AMA sometimes reminds me of PETA, if you cry wolf so much, eventually people will tune you out

[SEVENSGT]

last sunday on 94.5 the boston chapter AMA person was on saying sportbikes aren't made for going fast, blah blah blah.... I say yes they are

[benVFR]

I'm an organ donor too. I was before I ever thought of getting a motorcycle.

It's his opinion and he's entitled to have it. I hate some of the shit AMA spews just as much as his shit.

We are not doing ourselves any favors with the non-riding public making abolishing helmet laws our #1 priority.

[RandyO]

there's nothing wrong with being an organ donor, I have the box checked on my license, but it's like helmets, it shouldn't be mandatory.

[RandyO]

this is the editorial in the Detriot paper

BRIAN DICKERSON: No brain our gain, Senate tells bikers

March 21, 2005






BY BRIAN DICKERSON
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST



These are dark times for champions of the right to die.


Jack Kevorkian is behind bars. Oregon's experiment with physician-assisted suicide is under siege by religious zealots in the U.S. Justice Department. And Congress is groping frantically for ways to interpose itself between brain-damaged Terri Schiavo and the husband Florida courts recognize as her legal surrogate.


But fear not, libertarians: The right to die is alive and well in Michigan!


All you need is a motorcycle license and, if you live elsewhere, a willingness to spend your last tourist dollars in the Great Lakes State.


In an extraordinary display of bipartisan nincompoopery, the state Senate struck a blow last week for those who yearn to dash their brains out on Michigan highways.


Eleven Republicans joined 10 Democrats in voting to repeal a state law requiring motorcyclists to wear helmets, a change the Senate's only physician, Kalamazoo Republican Tom George, said would double the number of annual motorcycle fatalities in Michigan.



Ride free and die
Not that those who supported the bill are cravenly kowtowing to bikers. In an amendment that explicitly recognizes the increased liability foisted on Michigan hospitals, the Senate also voted to require that every biker carry medical insurance.


George and Sen. Bev Hammerstrom, R-Temperance, who opposed the repeal, had suggested that each cyclist be required to carry $350,000 in medical coverage. The Senate majority settled on $10,000, an amount that should more than cover the lifetime medical care most serious closed-head injury victims require -- as long as they don't live through the first night.


But if the helmet law repeal seems likely to burden trauma centers and the taxpayers who subsidize them, it's also a boon to Michiganders awaiting vital organ transplants. In emergency rooms, where seriously injured riders are privately known as donorcyclists, the no-helmet crowd is prized as a rich source of youthful hearts, livers and kidneys, among other organs that remain well preserved long after brain death.


If only lawmakers had thought to add a requirement that all helmet-less cyclists agree to donate their organs. And why not require donorcyclists to sign papers declining extraordinary lifesaving measures, so that that deserving organ recipients aren't kept waiting unnecessarily?



A piece of the action
Not everyone will buy the suggestion that repealing the helmet law advances the right-to-die agenda. Many lawmakers who can't abide the government coming between a man and his motorcycle wouldn't hesitate to get between Terri Schiavo and her physicians, if only the courts would let them.


Allowing healthy people to dash their brains out on the open road is one thing; after all. Letting a brain-damaged woman die in privacy is quite another.


For one thing, donorcyclists generate a lot more bar and restaurant revenue. According to those who want to repeal the helmet law, Michigan forfeits many of those dollars to states that don't mandate helmets. If our state wants its fair share of the biker market, they argue, it should worry less about the donorcyclists' skulls and more about their wallets.


Of course, some of Kevorkian's champions used to argue that authorizing physician-assisted suicide would make Michigan a magnet for other states' terminally ill. There'd be jobs and tax revenues galore, an assisted-suicide clinic in every town big enough to have its own post office.


The thing is, I always figured they were kidding.


Contact BRIAN DICKERSON at 248-351-3697 or dicker@freepress.com.

[ChrisNoF4i]

I'm an organ donor.

On a related note, I just had a living will drawn up this week so I won't have to suffer through the humiliation of being fed through a tube, etc, etc.

[Awesome]

I agree with his point that it's rediculous for them to repeal the helmet law and retarded for these people to ride hard without one, other than maybe a put down the strip which even I have been guilty of from time to time. Some things he says are just harsh though and I'm sure he doesn't really feel that way, he's just being facetious I think. The way I see helmet laws they're to protect the people who don't know better. I think the AMA should have spent it's time and money dealing with this officer in CT instead of this article, but it seems to me they may put their tail between there legs when it comes to chasing or attacking LEOs.

as far as organ donation...I'm not checked off as of now. The one thing I don't want is to end up as a cadaver at some medical school. Is that a possibility in being a donor? You can not imagine the disrespectfull shit some of those medical students pull. But I would be fine with donating organs to save or help someone.

[Cue Ball]

Originally posted by SEVENSGT
I am an orgn donor, what's wrong with that, if I die and some kid can live with my lung then so be it, mandotory NO, but we all should be IMHO

Me too! This guy is an idot, makes me want to ride to Michigan and kick his a@@.

[hohum]

Originally posted by hessogood

as far as organ donation...I'm not checked off as of now. The one thing I don't want is to end up as a cadaver at some medical school. Is that a possibility in being a donor? You can not imagine the disrespectfull shit some of those medical students pull. But I would be fine with donating organs to save or help someone.

You have to specifically donate your body for medical research to end up as a cadaver in a med school. Organ donation is entirely seperate.

Cheers,
Chris

[breakdirt916]

So should people playing flag football without a helmet sign papers forcing them to be organ donors?

[benVFR]

How about forcing car drivers who crash without seatbelts to miss out on certain medical treatment and force them to be organ donors...

I think it'd be much easier to make that argument...

[ChrisNoF4i]

And people wonder why kids go on shooting sprees at school.
Society hates me, but I don't give two shits about society.