Advice from crazy people

Dear AFCP,
I need money. I’m a college student, what do you expect? I’ve donated blood a couple times before, but I recently heard that you can actually sell blood plasma and even whole blood. So of course, that sounds really great to me. I’m healthy and there are people who need that stuff more than me. But I talked about it with my mom and she flipped out!

“Do you think your obligation to your blood cells ends at erythropoiesis? Your genetic code – contained in every cell of your body – is your duty to preserve, protect, and help to progress in life. In fact, stop scratching your nose, missy! Think how many potential humans could be cloned from those skin cells you’re scraping off!”

I had never thought about it that way. In fact, I have since stopped scratching my nose, bathing, and live in deathly fear of paper cuts. In the unlikely event that human cloning ever becomes practical, I could be killing wads and wads of tiny people! I now mourn the millions of babies my skin sheds off all by itself, and I can’t even leave the house because I might step on something and kill even more! Now my financial situation seems even more hopeless than before. AFCP, what do I do?
-Poor AND A Murderer?

Witty Advice:
If it’s not too painful and inconvenient, I don’t really see what the problem is with selling blood. However, I would check with the company to make sure that they’re actually after the whole blood and not the plasma. Plasma involves separating out the fluid in your blood and leaving your cells, and your genes, to die, so that would be uncool.
-Watery Grave

I’m a social Darwinist, and often have trouble distinguishing normative and positive analysis. However, I’m pretty sure that what your mother said is also what she should have said.
 
I hope you agree with my semi-mystical belief that nature knows best, and that the best way we can maximize human happiness is by following our natural drives. After all, these drives have been selected over generations to maximize human reproductive fitness, and in my twisted worldview, reproductive fitness is exactly equivalent to human happiness.

So yes, you do have an obligation towards anything that might possibly contain your genes. Once the genes are there, that person immediately gains some of your personality traits and possibly bits of your soul as well, so you have a responsibility toward that being. After all, if you don’t care for your genes, you are reproductively unfit, aka “morally inferior”.
-Francis Galton

There’s always a shortage of blood and blood plasma, so if getting money for it encourages you to give blood more often, I think that’s a great thing.
What worries me is your mother’s disapproval. Any and every activity you choose to participate in is definitely her business, and she deserves not to be made unhappy.
-She Is Disappoint

For Next Week:
I strongly feel that overpopulation is one of the biggest unsolved problems in the world today.
So I do my part; I tell everyone I know that they should consider adopting, and berate people who wish to sell their eggs or sperm for causing more people to come into the world. Once I become a parent, I don’t want my children to have to live in an overpopulated world.

Lately, however, I’ve been feeling a strange sensation of cognitive dissonance whenever I start my overpopulation rant.
 
I can’t exactly pinpoint the source, but I get a clear impression that I’m part of the problem! Imagine that.
How can I make this sneaking suspicion that I’m a hypocrite go away?
-Alternatives Are Only For Others