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Originally Posted by jorgelito
I have one reservation and hopefully people will be openminded enough to set the record straight if they do know the answer and not make personal attacks.
I am NOT an organ donor (except specified for family) because I am worried that someone in the ER will stop trying to save my life because potentially my organs parted out will save more lives than just keeping me (one person) alive. Logically, I understand that - it makes sense. Without any emotional attachment, one (EX: doctor) could do more good by harvesting out some guy laying on the ER table to many recipients rather than spend so much effort trying to save ONE life. Theoretically this makes sense and sort even appeals to the accountant/economist in me, but I wouldn't want to be the guy on the table.
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This is the most frustrating things for me to respond to. I truly is hard for me to not make personal attacks because of ones paranoia that the people who are trained to save your life will actually let you die so someone else will live.
The background behind my inner feelings of this is because my father would not be alive to this day if it wasn’t for organ donation, and to think that people buy their way into this list and a doctor will do only a 2nd rate job just frustrates me.
So please let me try to explain to the best that I can of why your, and many others view on this is wrong.
On average only 20,000 people a year even get a organ transplant, lungs for example is only a 1 in 3,000 chance. If you smoke, you're not on this list. Its as simple as that, these are people who by a foul chance in life got the shit stick and ended up with a disease by either genetics or just other non controllable means. My father for example waited NINE (9) years for his turn.
Every day about 70 people gain some form of a organ transplant, on that same day 16 other people on the waiting list have died. To make matters worse, every 15-16 minutes a new person is added to this list of waiting.
For example in 2003 15,671 transplants took place while 5,968 people died waiting.
Who are you to judge if you shouldn’t have helped one of those 5,968 people and their FAMILIES not live another day just because you felt your organs were to good for them. Or that you felt the doctor would let you die, which is absolutely absurd. Religious reasons I can fully understand, and this was in no way directed towards you.
Every year over 27,000 people suffer a form of a accident that leaves their body in complete health but brain dead. (This means there is ZERO chance of saving you, you are already dead but your body is in tip top shape.) Of those 27,000 only 15-17% are organ donors.
Of those organ donors even fewer are possible candidates of being capable of a donor.
Just because you pick "Organ Donor" doesn’t mean your body will be used.
So what happens when you pass away in a manor that leaves your body in a possible state of helping others via organ donation?
Well first off lets hit up this common false myth: If the doctor knows that you are an organ donor he will do less to save your life. Besides the apparent inhumanity of this idea, the very doctors that are there to save your life are not the same doctors that take care of the transplant teams. The transplant doctors and teams do not even know of your existence until the medical ER doctor declares you dead/ brain dead and from there more tests are made to determine if you are even worthy of being a donor.
When the body is declared brain dead and healthy enough to be a donor the transplant team will contact the body’s immediate family and request authorization that they may use the organs. Even if you say yes but your family says no, they have the power to stop it. Transplant teams respect family wishes before anyone else’s. This is why it is MASSIVLY important to let your family members to know your status on organ donation if they happen to oppose it.
Some states are trying to bypass this step and leave it up to the living person when they declare that they wish to be a organ donor, but it is still a gray area.
Some states are even taking matters into the idea of no longer ignoring persons who wish to be organ donors but have illnesses that are dangerous to others such as HIV and etc. They are trying to create special lists for those that are also in the same category. Why waste what can be still used in another to save their life?
Now I'm sure some of you wont even read this, and well I'll just simply show you no pity. This is a very personal matter to me, and I will always enjoy teaching others of it.
For the source required folks out there, here are some of my sources of this information.
http://www.applesforhealth.com/Organ...ganstats6.html
http://www.livingbank.org/site/PageS...ns_and_Answers
www.donatelifeny.org/organ/o_statistics.html
www.organdonor.gov
www.optn.org
Health & Medicine Week. 7/5/2004 pg800-802
Health & Medicine Week. 8/9/2004 pg 1189-1190
Greater Erie Eye & Organ Bank - Booklets from there.