Week 4 - What I Found Interesting

Choosing which topic to write about this week was hard, being the first time we get a choice. I've ended up choosing 'what I find most interesting about my topic for assignment 1'. I'm answering this about assignment 1 because I don't feel I've made enough progress to have any particular interests in assignment 2.

In assignment 1 my topic had a few interesting factors. The first thing I found really interesting was how much people didn't feel strongly about the topic. There were a couple of sources with strong opinions but in sources that asked the public's opinion very few people had strong feelings about the topic. When I chose the topic I fully expected to find a lot more sources with firm opinions on either side of the debate.

Another interesting part of the research for this was that there was more sources supporting the idea of a system that gave priority to those willing to donate organs. When I first read the question I had such a strongly negative reaction that I assumed that many sources would take a similarly negative approach but even the sources that did argue against the system weren't very strongly against it. Most were either arguing both points or arguing in support of a different system.

In the information collected I was interested by a few things. The first was how few people are registered to donate organs worldwide. My family are mostly in support of organ donation to to learn that so many people hadn't registered or oppose the idea was a little bit surprising but after reading about the reasons for these statistics I had a good idea of why it would be that these people aren't prepared to donate their organs. 

I was also interested to learn about the different systems in place around the world. I'd never put much thought into the fact it would be so different everywhere else. I was somewhat under the assumption that everywhere had the same or a similar system to what we have in New Zealand but it turns out we are very unusual in how we register to donate organs. We are one of the only countries that tie registering to donate to our driver's licenses. Other places, like America, have a system in which you have to actively seek to put yourself down as a donor and other places have a system in which people are automatically registered and must seek to be taken off the registered donors list if they disagree.

There is so much interesting information surrounding the issue of organ donation and I definitely came across a fair few things that intrigued me in the process of researching for this paper. Organ donation is the kind of topic that wouldn't come up in other papers I'm doing; I've had to write papers on things like rivers and carnivorous snails this year so this was a step away from my normal and I was relieved to find myself genuinely interested in the information I was reading. I expect assignment 2 will also be well out of my comfort zone and hopefully I will find more interesting information whilst doing that as well.

Week 3 - Summarising the Debate

My topic for my position paper is "Only individuals who are already registered as organ donors should be eligible to receive an organ donation." This, like all the topics for this assignment, has a variety of arguments surrounding it.

There are many facets of this argument and one facet is how successful it would be in different locations. On one side of this is a source titled 'Increasing organ donation by presumed consent and allocation priority: Chile' (Zúñiga-Fajuri, 2015) which provides the example of Chile as somewhere it has been a successful policy. On the other side there is an article titled 'Demographic and Socioeconomic Factors Influencing Public Attitudes Toward a Presumed Consent System for Organ Donation Without and With a Priority Allocation Scheme' (Tumin, Tafran, Mutalib, Satar, Said, Adnan & Lu, 2015) which provides Malaysia as an example of a location where this system would experience very little success.

Source 1

This source has two main points in support of this system. The first is that it would increase organ donations. Both Israel and Singapore are used as examples of where the system has been in place long enough to see a positive trend in donation rates over the time priority has been given to those willing to donate. It is also mentioned that by providing an incentive there is a stronger motivation to donate which will therefore lead to an increase in donation rates. The second point is that it is a more morally fair system. This source refers to the reciprocation of organs as "a base moral requisite" (pp. 200) and claims that "a fair concept of justice calls for reciprocal altruism" (pp. 200). This source also points out that to prioritize who gets organs isn't exclusion but that it is just a system to help select a recipient when there is more than one person waiting for an organ. A final relevant point this source makes on the note of cultural differences is that cultural changes begin with changes in law. Overall this source has a fairly strong argument in the sense that it makes concise and clear points, however, it is lacking in supporting statistics to back up these points.

Source 2

The overall point of the source is that systems such as this would not be immediately successful as they have been elsewhere because Malaysian people have different opinions surrounding this idea. One fact this source includes is that 34% of Malaysians are willing to donate their organs. After performing a study they report that 54.6% would object to donating organs. This is fairly divided but in other sources on this topic statistics from other countries are always at least slightly more in support of the system. The lack of support is attributed to the "absence of public trust in the medical system and the absence of a well-established donation and transplant infrastructure" (pp. 3). This source has far more statistical information but its focus is more on the idea of a presumed consent system so finding relevant information is more difficult and the argument is less specific. 

The reasons these sources have each taken the positions they have is because of their views of what is successful and the various factors surrounding organ donation in the areas they are focusing on. The first source is supporting it because they are focusing on a country where it has successfully been implemented and they have strong opinions on the morality of it. The second source is less supportive because they are focusing on a country that doesn't agree with the system and they are focusing primarily on the statistics rather than their opinions of the morality of the system. 

References:

• Tumin, M., Tafran, K., Mutalib, M., Satar, N., Said, S., Adnan, W., & Lu, Y. (2015, October). Demographic and Socioeconomic Factors Influencing Public Attitudes Toward a Presumed Consent System for Organ Donation Without and With a Priority Allocation Scheme. Medicine, 94(42), e1713. doi:10.1097/MD.0000000000001713

• Zúñiga-Fajuri, A. (2015, March). Increasing Organ Donation by Presumed Consent and Allocation Priority: Chile. Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 93(3), 199-202. doi:10.2471/BLT.14.139535

Week 2 - My Research

My unconventional start to researching for a paper is always to go straight to the library website and see what I can find without doing background reading. Why do I do this? Because it starts my brain thinking in the right context and without doing this I find starting assignments daunting.

My topic for this assignment is; "Only individuals who are already registered as organ donors should be eligible to receive an organ donation." After skimming through a few more general articles I went on to the more reasonable route of reading simpler sources, like Wikipedia and donor.co.nz, to get a broader idea of the topic. 

Now that I had a familiarity with the language around the topic I could search for key terms such as 'organ allocation priority' which gave me articles and books with far more relevance. I accessed each source that looked like it had relevance and skimmed through any piece of information (the abstract or the index) that would tell me whether it would be useful. I also went to good web resources and looked for useful information on these.

My next step was reading my sources. For this assignment most of what I read was journal articles although there were some government documents and a few books as well. Instead of reading entire books I looked through the contents and index for any words or topics that are related to organ donation priority. 

Around halfway through my research I started planning and writing small pieces of my paper as I started to get a complete grasp on the topic and exactly where I stand on it.

That brings me to the difficulties I faced during research:

Finding what words would return results in a search was difficult; prioritizing organ donation according to registration is a complex idea that doesn't immediately appear to have common terms across sources. Eventually I found a few ways of phrasing the idea that returned more results but it held up my research a little bit. 

My first reaction when I read the topic was 'of course not! that wouldn't be fair.' But as I read my stance became more confused; if we have a shortage of organs is it so wrong to find ways to encourage donation? But what about those who can't donate for more complex reasons?  I began to make a 'for' and 'against' list and I found myself wanting to argue more with the points I made on the 'against' side than I did those on the 'for' side which finally settled my confusion and gave me a clear position for my paper. 

So what could I have done better? My research process can be quite all-over-the-place and very inefficient sometimes. I could have skipped that first step. It's not really necessary and more time wasting than anything else and I could have started my 'for' and 'against' list far earlier into the research process rather than spending time worried about what my stance was. 

Overall, despite my weird way of doing things I managed to get all my reading done well within time and without too many hiccups and I think I came away from it with a good grasp on the topic I am writing about. 

Week 1 - Introduction

Week One-
Hey guys, welcome to my first blog post. 
My name is Alicia and I'm a distance student living in Whangarei. This semester I'm finishing up the first year of my bachelor of science double majoring in geography and earth science. 
The earth and how it works is something I have been fascinated in for a long time. I remember as a child being obsessed with natural disasters to the point that I made myself terrified that a volcano or a tsunami was going to happen at any second. That fear has since manifested itself into curiosity and a drive to understand how the earth works.
I don't have a specific goal in mind for the end of this degree yet. I'm an indecisive person and settling on just one field is something I haven't managed to do yet. I have idealistic ideas about wanting a career that involves travelling and seeing all the amazing things earth has to offer and I have practical ideas about working for a local council. Both ideas sound exciting so wherever I land between the two I'll be happy. 
The major step towards achieving the ambitions I have has been beginning this degree. Last year I started studying at Auckland university doing a bachelor of arts in anthropology. But after some time (and personal problems preventing me from continuing into the second semester) I realized that, as interesting as I was finding the things I was learning, I didn't have the same enthusiasm for it as I did when I was studying geography at school. So I made the massive step of enrolling at Massey in a bachelor of science this year. Step one has been deciding to enroll and adjusting to distance study. Step two is going to be to decide where exactly I want this path to take me. 
As I'm sure is the case with many people in this course I enrolled because it's compulsory for my degree and I figured it would be best to get it done in my first year. Now that I've gotten a chance to look at what the course actually is I see that it will be a great asset in the future. No matter what career I end up in, being able to communicate effectively will be an undeniably valuable skill. 
Having not started the course yet it's hard to pinpoint my strengths and weaknesses. I do know I can form a good argument and support it well so that would be a strength. A weakness would be that it has been some time since I've worked in a group so that will take some getting used to over the coming weeks. Other than that I don't know what my strengths and weaknesses in communication are but I hope this course will allow me to identify and remedy any weaknesses and further enforce my strengths.