Organ Donation
 

Following on from the Ashes to Ashes thread, I noticed that many of the TFPers are organ donors. I have always been in two minds about it myself, I can see many good reasons to do it, but then... strangely, one of the things that bothers me (I know, I'll be dead), is that my organs could go to save someone completely undeserving. Is that weird? I know, undeserving is a strong word...

I'd love to hear what everyone has to say about why they chose to become organ donors, or not.

I'm not an organ donor, yet. I do plan on becoming one when I get around to it, but I'm not going to rush out and get and organ donor card because I need it now.

I cannot think of any reason not to donate your organs. You'll be dead, so there's no point in keeping 'em to yourself if there's someone out there who can benefit from them. Whether they deserve it or not I'll leave up to the Organ Donor Organisation.

"I cannot think of any reason not to donate your organs."

I have type 1 Hep C. I don't think a hospital will accept any of them.
I have not asked, though.

well if someone has hep and needs one they could be at the top of your list... just a thought... i wonder if the hospitals think like that...

I am an organ donor because I won't need them when I'm dead, and it could easily be a matter of LIFE OR DEATH for someone else. How could I possibly deny that opportunity to anyone, especially with it costs me absolutely nothing?

Someday it could be a loved one, or even myself that needs a new organ. I can only hope that option will be available at the time, should it come.

I have nothing to lose, and everything to give.

I think I've told this story before... but eh -- I think it's worth retelling...

Many many moons ago- before I was a grouchy, surly, old lady... I was young... and I had friends who had a beautiful son... This son when he was in second grade was diagnosed with leukemia... after much treatments that didnt work -- the parents started with the search for a bone marrow donor - neither parent nor sibling was a good match.... They asked friends and family to donate platelets and blood for the kids treatment -- and oh by the way - would you mind being tested.... Guess what? I matched... I'm not sure if bone marrow counts as an organ but I had more than enough- so was happy to oblige... and even happier when I got to watch this kid graduate from college.

I did it again a few years later for someone I never met... never knew their name...just that it was a young man who needed marrow- who the hell was I to say no?

I feel the same about my organs -- my eyesight sucks... but if it helps someone else - -I won't need 'em... Liver, kidneys, heart (that's small and kind unused but hey - have at it)

What if they aren't deserving? Maybe it's the Pollyanna in me - that somewhere deep down I beleiveint he good in people - that if they got a new organ -- amybe they'd get a new outlook on life and change their ways and do some good.

I was talking to a friend the other night, this person hasn't been one of my favorite people lately because of a really bad choice they made (and I was having a hard time with the whole love the sinner hate the sin concept) Somewhere in the conversation I was asked -- would I still give a kidney? Yeah-- no question... That's always been a runnning joke with people close to me-- do you like them enough to give them a kidney...

exactly what sultana said - my wife and I both know that we both want to donate our organs, so in the event of either deaths, hopefully there will be no confusion.

I kind of have the same problem little_tippler has in that I don't want my organs to go to people who don't deserve them. By undeserving, I mean I don't want my liver that I haven't destroyed by drinking like a fish to go to someone who has liver cancer due to alcoholism. Or my lungs to a smoker, etc.

I've avoided this problem by deciding that I'd rather donate my body to science and be a cadaver for medical schools.

-Tamerlain

My thoughts exactly. Every member of my family is an organ donor, as is my significant other. I know that if I were to die tomorrow they would follow my wishes of donation to the letter. That thought brings me to this: MAKE SURE YOUR NEXT OF KIN KNOWS YOU ARE AN ORGAN DONOR AND WILL HONOR YOUR WISHES AFTER DEATH.

Cool story, mal. I'm on the national bone marrow registry, as is Grace, but neither of us has ever been called up.

I'm an organ donor, which actually came up last month during the first day after my accident. The doctors at one point were talking to Sissy (this was before Grace was making my medical decisions) about whether she knew my wishes for my organs.

Worthiness isn't an issue for me. It's not about what people deserve. People get all sorts of shit heaped on them that they don't deserve. It's about what they need. People die every day because of the shortage of available organs.

I echo the sentiment, I see no reason not to donate.

Gilda

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.

Similarly, why didn't they harvest out Tookie Williams' organs. In a poetic justice sensem this guys death could have been turned into a positive by having his death save more lives. That's redemption I suppose.

Anyways, I guess I just don't have much faith in our system (US medical) these days especially since you can "buy" your way to the top of the organ waiting list (some Saudi Arabian guy did this a couple of months ago here in LA - I think either UCLA or USC was involved) - it totally screwed up the waiting list and stuff.

Bone marrow on the other hand, I could do. As long as the doctors don't mess up or do anything unneccessary just so they can pad the bill or use bad blood etc. I would suck to get HIV for doing a good deed just because a doctor was careles or greedy. I always watch my dentist like a hawy and inspect everything he does and uses.

This is one of the reasons I went from being a donor to not being a donor after reading about it.

Wait, but is it true?

This is the reason you have a living will that states your intentions. Please look into the details of your legal "permission" and I think you will find that you govern all aspects of your outcome.

I would like to second jorgelito's question. Is it true? Any reliable data on that?

Take what they want. Giving my organs to someone would be better than them being worm food.

according to:
http://www.organdonor.gov/faq.html#6

Frequently Asked Questions

If I sign a donor card, will it affect the quality of medical care I receive at the hospital?
No! Every effort is made to save your life before donation is considered.


~~~~~~~~~~~~

and somewhere in the hippocratic oath is a line about first doing no harm...

I think of my kids, and how grateful I'd be that someone might help them some day, if need be. Then I do the same in kind! I'm all for it, and it's part of my living will.

I will never be an organ donor. I don't want anyone to benefit whatsoever from my death. I had always planned to drink some irradiated solution before I kick, just so nothing good comes from my body even.

Thanks for the link Mal, I've seen that FAQ at the DMV. I guess I really don't trust the source. Caveat emptor...

Hmmm.......so I guess it just comes down to a matter of faith then. Kind of ironic too.

I don't think the Hypocritical Oath comes into play: assuming all doctors take it, there are still crooked doctors - the oath doesn't prevent them from "doing harm".

For now, I will stick to the living will stipulating only family member get my organs.

This from Grace, who is a nurse who has worked as both a paramedic and ER nurse (paraphrased from a phone conversation):

It doesn't happen. ER personnel will do everything they can to save every patient without regard for organ donation.

Gilda

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.

Card Carrying member of the cut me up club here. Dont care who gets my parts.....but Im damn well gonna use 'em while I can.

My thoughts exactly. However, I still have organ donor on my license so that if somone in my family or one of my close friends should happen to need my organs I am available to them as an option. Other than that I would much rather my body go to science.

Question? I will be dead when any useful organs I might have are harvested. I won't have much interest in who is "deserving" or not. I can't even grasp that concept.

I hope I am fully harvested before cremation for whatever is left. Willing my body to science students, based upon the experience I had as one, is not the way I would choose to have my body "used".

My 2 cents.

I wrestled with the decision to become an organ donor. I'm not sure I can explain why I didn't feel right about becoming one sooner than I did. I've since signed up and I feel good about the decision. I guess the turning point for me was when one of my friends died in a car accident and she was a donor. Because of her death four people got the organs they needed to live. Her heart, lungs, liver and pancreas were donated. I still mourn her death because she was so young and we were so close, but it makes me happy to think that, though she died tragically and needlessly, her decision saved four peoples lives.

If you're dead you won't have much interest in anything - that's not the point. I think the point being made is that people want to be sure that they are helping people who are deserving of help.

I guess you could draw a similarity to homeless people. There are homeless people on the streets because they have spent everything they own feeding some form of addiction. There are also homeless people on the street who have lost everything due to something out of their control. Living in a large city, (Vancouver) I have met both types. I have no problem helping people I know are trying to help themselves - but I have a huge problem helping people who are just trying to feed an addiction.

It's not a perfect comparison, but there are parallels to be drawn.

I think another important point to make is that a lot of people who are of similar opinion to mine have no problem helping people who are the cause of their own problem; but they want to help people who are in need due to no cause of their own first. If there is an alcoholic with liver cancer and there is no one behind him on some list with liver cancer due to, say, radiation exposure or something, then yes, give the alcoholic my liver.

-Tamerlain

I am. Why not? As has been said- when the time comes that your organs may be called upon, you're a slab of meat. You're no longer a living human being. Your body may function but, without the brain, you are just a pumping heart, a breathing lung, etc. I know there are some religions where it's not allowed to do this sort of thing, and I can respect that if those are your beliefs. But, for everyone else... why not?

Even if you wrestle with issues of "more or less deserving" or "deserving at all", here's the thing: they're already on the list. They're going to get the part they need from someone. Let's say we have two people who need a heart. One you'd say is "deserving", and the other is not. Even if the "not deserving" person gets your heart, in this horrible hypothetical, that still brings the "deserving" person one step up the waiting list, one heart closer to life. So... even if you must insist that "undeserving" people are on the lists, think of the ones who really, truly need them. Again, YOU are done using them, just pass them on to someone who CAN use them. :)

Doctors are bound by law, the hippocratic oath, their licenses, and all the basic tenets of ethics and morality to continue to save your life until you're dead. They must do everything in their power to keep you from dying, and "letting" you die is simply not something that happens.

I hope this thread takes away the uncertainties some people have had, and can result in some extra donors in the future.

I have no problem donating organs in general, but I alwaysw think of those movies where the person takes on the memories from the donated organ (e.g., falls in love with the widow because of the donated heart).

If that stuff is true, then I would be wary of donating some of my organs. They've been through a lot.

Brain is safe to donate -- mostly unused.

Personally, I think that you should have to sign a card NOT to be an organ donor. It should be assumed that you are. So many lives would be saved.

I've been an organ donor since I was 16 when I first got my drivers license.

The only thing that makes me a tad uncomfortable is having my nekked body lying on a slab with a bunch of first year anatomy students butchering it while making fun of me :P

I always thought the whole cold-heartedness theme to your posts was just a ruse, and this is all the evidence I need to prove it is just a ruse. :icare:

As to some of the posts that concern the deservedness of those receiving the organs...I have to echo what elphaba said. I can't even grasp the concept that there are those undeserving of a chance to live. I am an organ donor because I believe that everyone deserves a chance. I also believe that that second chance may cause such an undeserving person to re-evaluate their life and make something good of it. That's the weird thing about people, they have a tendency to change after such a life-altering event.

Organ Donor here.

The thought of not giving someone something they desperately need after I am finished with it does not sit well with me.

Doctors will do anything they can to save your life. That is why we hold them in such high regard.


Donating my body to medical science? Um. I don't like the sounds of that. I guess so, but could it be for something cool, like forensic pathology? Do I get to choose?