Letters to the Editor (Editorial Policies)
Posted on November 2, 2006

Ethical questions over body blackmail

While I do agree with Mr. Undis’ Letter to the Editor from the Oct. 26 issue that his organ-donating program, LifeSharers, is both innovative and legal, I don’t find it to be at all ethical. The underlying idea appears to be nothing short of blackmailing those unsure about registering as organ donors in order to guarantee they might have a chance at life. No matter if it’s legal, to me this is fundamentally wrong. If people want to participate in this program, I fully respect their legal and personal right to do so, but to advocate a program that inherently trivializes the choices of people toward organ donation, no matter what their reason may be, is immoral. At this time I have not given permission to be a donor, nor have my parents, and it’s absurd to say it’s because we’re not “willing” to share the gift of life. Organ donation is not a simple issue to many people, and a system that excludes people is in no way fair, especially when considering the gravity of whether someone lives or dies. Issues inhibiting donation include someone’s religious standards, medical diseases tainting their organs (which is why they need transplants in the first place), family values, and finally those who just can’t donate. I respect your program, Mr. Undis, but please do not pass judgment on people like myself for the choices I have made. Everyone deserves to preserve his or her life, whether an organ donor or not.

Tory Federwisch, sophomore political science and history major

Don’t sell JMU libraries short

Responding to the letter in the Oct. 26 issue, Stephanie Strauss would find a lot of changes in library collections if she came back to investigate. JMU Libraries’ materials budget has doubled in the past five years and we are buying more books per year than ever before. Our journal collections now include over 11,000 titles, and our databases number over 350. Our children’s book collection has been much improved, with hundreds of new titles added. The whole collection is now located in the new Educational Technology and Media Center in Memorial Hall, close to the College of Education’s students and faculty. Librarians are working closely with JMU faculty to help them build information literacy concepts into assignments. That way, their students will know what are the best library resources for researching topics in their fields, and for evaluating what’s out there on the Internet, as Technical and Scientific Communication professor Cindy Allen recommended in the Oct. 23 article about student research skills. Last summer the library held a workshop in which 18 faculty from different departments collaborated with librarians on creating such assignments. As for old books, we still have them on our shelves, because that is what academic libraries do. What Strauss calls “time-capsule” material may be a valuable resource for someone researching historical context. She could even find historical information in online form in some our full-text primary source collections. I invite Strauss to come back and check us out!

Reba Leiding, JMU Libraries & Educational Technologies