Donate your organs

I believe that organ donation upon one’s death is the best last decision one can make.  Why should you hold on to a bunch of organs that will slowly die, decay, and turn into dust when someone else might benefit from them instead?

If you can save someone else’s life after you are dead, why not do it?

A lawmaker is trying to make it easier to harvest organs, and I fully agree with his efforts:

A New York assemblyman whose daughter is alive because of two kidney transplants wants his state to become the first in the nation to pass laws that would presume people want to donate their organs unless they specifically say otherwise.

Assemblyman Richard Brodsky believes the "presumed consent" measures would help combat a rising demand for healthy organs by patients forced to wait a year or more for transplants. Twenty-four European countries already have such laws in place, he said.

If he succeeds, distraught families would no longer be able to override their loved ones' decisions to donate upon their death. And eventually, hospitals would be able to assume the deceased consented to have his or her organs harvested, unless the person refused in writing.

Advocates say the availability of healthy donor organs is low just about everywhere nationwide, where 106,000 people are on a waiting list that averages three to four years for each type of organ.

But serious emotional, medical and ethical concerns worry families, who currently can stop organ harvests even if their loved ones agree to donate.

Presumed consent, opponents say, could force someone to become a donor against their will. It also might lead patients viewed as prospective donors to worry about how hard a medical team will work to save them if there is a greater benefit to harvesting the organs.

As I said, this makes sense to me and I hope they switch the consent to presumed, especially when it’s so easy for family members to override one’s wishes to donate his or her organs.

I can see how someone might feel like doctors won’t do all they can to save them if they know they can take the patient’s organs instead, but I doubt that that would really occur, since doctors swear an oath to do all they can to save a patient’s life unless it goes against that person’s wishes.