FE Hoppy: I agree but there is nothing in the transponder that allows us to see if it's overheated. The first we would know on the flight deck is when it fails.
I'm talking about flight crew having the option to manually select the transponder off. By all means retain the option to select another transponder and maybe set the transponder to squawk when the park brake comes off for ground surveillance, but in flight? Maybe going forward we would be better off working around the concerns mooted but lose the ability to disable it so easily.