The Importance Of Becoming An Organ Donor

Imagine you are laying in a hospital bed connected to multiple machines, IV’s and monitors. The only thing keeping you alive is the heart and lung machine, the team of doctors, nurses and specialist. Even with the help of modern medicine you will only remain alive as long as you stay in that hospital bed; attached to those lifesaving machines. Even with the help of those machines your life is not guaranteed. Now imagine knowing that the only thing that can save your life is a heart transplant, and having to wait your turn on a very long list to get one.

Please try and consider the following situation. You’re sitting in an emergency room, waiting for your dad to awake after falling into liver failure, costing him to need a new liver. Not knowing if it’s possible, crossing your fingers. You wish you could help, but you can’t. Someone else can. An organ donor. According to organdonor.gov, about 116,000 U.S. citizens are waiting on the organ transplant list as of August 2017. To put that number into perspective, that’s more than double the amount of people that can fit into Yankee Stadium. And to make matters worse, 20 people each day die waiting for a transplant.(organdonor.gov) Organ donation can offer patients a second chance at life and provides

If I agree to donate my organs, the hospital won’t work as hard to save my life: When you go to hospitals for treatment, doctors focus on saving your life, not someone else’s, and the doctor in charge of your care has nothing to do with transplantation.

At the age of 18 I think that everyone should be offered the chance to become an organ donor instead of at 16 being asked for their drivers license. People should not be forced to allow doctors to harvest their organs from their deceased bodies, but if they are okay with that they can go ahead. To be blunt, I think the world is overpopulated and the Darwanian evolution theories phrase, “Survival of the Fittest” deffinetly applies to this topic. Advances in human science are fantastic and I think that if we can help someone we should, but if someone is not comfortable with sharing their organs because of either religous of personal views they should not be forced to.

Organ donations not only save lives but also money and time. If organ donations became prevalent the organ recipient would no longer need dialysis. Since there is no need for dialysis the cost to use the machine would lessen; this means that the cost of equipment would decrease, saving the hospital and insurance company’s money. More lives would be saved as well as benefit from those that no longer need an organ. In the book titled “Elements of Bioethics” adult organ transplants are only that have medical insurance. If organs are taken from recently deceased the cost for those that has no medical coverage was lessen. The process of organ transplantation is life changing and time is crucial. With shorter waiting time it would put ease on the person’s heart to know that this lifesaving event would happen sooner rather than later. In addition, when the organ is taken from the recently deceased the risk would be eliminated from

Central Idea: Becoming an organ donor gives transplant recipients the gift of life and there are unnecessary barriers and misconceptions keeping people from becoming donors.

In her essay, “Will Part of You Be Left Behind?”, Elisabeth Bletsch claims that being an organ donor does not hurt the donor but instead saves lives of those in need. Although she seems to be undecided on the choice of people being donors in the beginning, she ultimately comes to the realization that a person can save a life by being one. She also states that those who don’t register as organ donors are either too busy or have not accepted the idea of death yet.

With the evolution of time variety of advanced and useful medical procedures to save lives have been discovered, one of which being organ donations. Now days patients suffering from serious and life threatening conditions have the option of getting their organs replaced; a second chance at life. It should be mandatory that all people, once they have died be organ and tissue donors because after death they no longer need or use their organs. Secondly, by simply donating you could save numerous lives and lastly, there are critical organ shortages within Canada which could be resolved if there were more donors available

In the United States alone more than 116,000 men, women, and children are waiting to receive an organ but only about 28,000 operations are done each year, one person can save and or heal eight up to 85 lives with organ and tissue donations. Every day 22 people die waiting for a lifesaving operation and every ten minutes another person is added to the ever-growing list. Many people are donors but one in every three are over the age of 50 and may not have viable organs or pass in a way to donate. For every 1,000 deaths there are only three people who pass in a way that donation can take place. Roughly 95% of U.S. adults support organ donation but only about 54% are signed up to be a donor. Up to 83% of people on the waiting list are in need of a kidney and 13% need a liver. On a yearly basis as many as 8,000 people on the waiting list die (Organ Donation Statistics).

Increasing the supply of willing donors should be the top priority because, majority of people are in need of organ transplants and not many are willing to be organ donors. There are “more than 120,00 people in the United States waiting for organ transplants” and every 10 minutes a new name is added to the waiting list. Meanwhile, according to Donate a Life there’s only “14,414 organ donors.” It’s obvious to see a tremendous increase of patients waiting for an organ transplantation, while the number of willing donors is not reaching up to that level.

“Without the organ donor, there is no story, no hope, and no transplant. But when there is an organ donor, life springs from death, sorrow turns to hope, and a terrible loss becomes a gift.” –UNOS

Main Point 1: Organ donation is such a simple and selfless action one takes to save the lives of others. Now much of what we will we discuss, also applies to living donation, but we will focus on deceased donation. The number of patients waiting for organs far exceeds the number of people who have registered to become organ donors. According to UNOS, every 10 minutes, a new name is added to the national transplant list. 20 people die everyday from the lack of available organs. Just one deceased person, can save up to 8 lives, 9 lives if you split the liver. Now if you donate tissues, you can improve the lives of up to 50 people! The need for organ donation is growing every minute. You can see why we need to register.

During the opening, it was mentioned that every age, race and ethnic group is effected and have a need for organ donations. Below are graphs from the US Department of Health & Human Services that clearly illustrate the needs for the waiting recipients. Illustration 1 shows the percentage of waiting candidates by their ethnicity. Statistically, Latinos suffer from obesity which leads to diabetes and heart disease. African Americans suffer higher rate of diabetes and high blood pressure. Asians and Hawaiians reportedly have a higher rate of kidney and liver diseases. Each of these dispositions can lead to other complications effecting the organs and eventually causing organ failure, even with treatment. Illustration 2 show that the people needing an organ donation is not limited to the aged or infirmed but range from newborn to over 65 years old.

With more than 7000 to 8000 people on the waiting list in England alone, on the waiting list for an organ transplant and only an estimated 2,800 organs that are transplanted each year (NHSBT 2016), there is a significant shortage of organs available for transplant. There is an increasing concern that the current system for organ donation in England, is failing to meet the demand in organs needed for transplantation. The number of people needing transplants is going up steadily by about 8 percent each year.(b) The number of premature deaths has also increased to approximately 1000 (Rieu. 2010) every year and this is conceivably the most tragic reminder that the current system is failing us. To combat this problem, many health researchers have suggested changes to change the organ donation laws, from informed consent to presumed consent.

“Organ donation is not a tragedy, but it can be a beautiful light, in the midst of one” (Unknown). There has been many disbeliefs about donating your organs over the years. The organ demand drastically exceeds the available supply, which is why more people need to be organ donors. People should become organ donors because of the limited availability of organs and the chance to save many lives.