Yesterday was a first for me. During a lecture, I briefly discussed the sad state of organ donation, and how altruism alone cannot satisfy the demand for organs. Afterward, I sat down to sign some books. A woman approached and, after getting her book signed, put something else in front of me for a signature: her driver’s license. She had decided that she wanted to sign up as an organ donor, and asked me to be one of her signing witnesses. Her name is Jackie Stanley. I have to say, it was very moving. The only problem is that someone with Jackie’s characteristics — caring, foresight, etc. — is probably less likely to get in a fatal car crash than someone with the opposite traits (I hope so, at least).
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I’ve joked for about 12 years now (since I had a kidney disease diagnosed) with my family and friends, tellng them, “Take good care of my kidney.”
So thanks for the attention that Freakanomics brings to the topic.
I think a good idea would be to do what one country did (Israel, I think), which was to put the people who signed on as organ donors as being at the top of the list of recipients should they require an organ. Has the potential of rewarding the donors while providing incentive.
Hopefully in the not-too-distant future, we won’t have to rely on donors because we’ll just print organs as we need them.
Donating your organs is one of the stupidest things I’ve heard of since, by doing so, you are depriving your family and your heirs of part of their patrimony.
You may as well donate your house to charity when you die. instead of leaving it to your kids and heirs. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.
I wish the US would make organ donation an assumed preference, so that one has to opt out. Obviously, there could be institutionalized automatic “opt outs” for those with surnames that would indicate possible Muslim faith, those with chronic illnesses that would render their organs unusable, etc.
And I wish we would make it so that those who require a new organ because they were an alcoholic or drug addict only get new organs when all of those people with hereditary hepatitis B, etc., have received organs.
My wife’s father (an immigrant from Southeast Asia and a teetotaler his whole life) died while waiting for a liver transplant in 1992. Yet a few years later, chronic boozehound and actor Larry Hagman got his transplant. I believe he’s had two of them now.
Where’s the fairness in that?
Go back to the little dot thaqt falls off, only use it for the people that opt out.
If the time ever comes, I doubt we will hear any objections from them.
I became a donor as the first act of adulthood when I turned 18. Uruguay has established an opt-out policy. That is, you are a donor UNLESS you state otherwise. I think this is pretty clever.
What’s the big deal? When you’re dead, it’s not like you need the organs anymore. That’s selfishness.