Given the recent articles about problems with the donor registry in England, I thought I’d address the most common reason people say they aren’t sure about donation from what’ I’ve heard in America and the American system.
There’s a lot of great reasons one might have to not sign up to be an organ donor. Many of them are religious or cultural in nature. Interestingly enough, many of people’s culture based fears go away once they see how donation can benefit another life, and how benefiting another life fits well with their set of beliefs. So what’s the reason people give me for not wanting to sign up?
“The doctors wont try as hard to save my life if I’m on the donor registry.”
It’s an understandable fear, but not a reasonable one.
Let’s shoot right to the heart of the suspicion: Greed. People think that the hospital or doctors or staff will benefit more from them dying and their organs being transplanted than them being saved. Being in the business, I can see some reason to this. I’ve been told that organ transplantation makes transplant centers a lot of money and I believe it. It’s an expensive operation and it is one which guarantees a patient who will receive a great deal of care before and long after the surgery.
But what most people don’t realize is that there are not many transplant centers. There are not many doctors who deal with transplant. And there is zero chance you will ever encounter anyone directly related with transplant while you are alive. God forbid you have a health problem or major trauma, you will never, in your need to get better, be dealing with anyone in transplant. It just doesn’t work that way.
Respect that the doctors and nurses charged with your care really do want to save your life. They have no interest in your death.
How it does work:
Let’s say something happens to you. Nobody involved in transplant will ever know about it until just before you have reached a point of, medically speaking, no return. This point of no return is brain death, a point in which the flow of blood and oxygen to your brain has ceased. Your brain, as an organ, dies. Your body, what remains of it, is kept working in virtue of machines in the ICU such as IV drips to keep your blood pressures stable and a ventalator to keep you breathing. Brain death is a difficult concept because to the layman’s eye, a person who is brain dead looks much the same as someone who is vegetative or in a coma. There heart is still beating. There body is still warm. But everything abotu who they are as a person with a consciousness, a memory, a personality, and a future is dead. It is only at this point that organ donation moves any degree forward.
Your family will be involved.
Unless you are homeless and have absolutely no family to be found all due dilligence will be given to tracking down your family so that they can consent to organ donation if you haven’t already done so on the donor registry. Though signing up on the donor registry is a legal form of consent, your family will still be involved with the process when the time comes.
It’s that simple. Organ donation will not be addressed by the hospital staff charged with saving your life. If you progress to such a state that the choices are to allow your body to die as your brain has or, first, donate, your family will be consulted first, even if you have registered.
So why register to be a donor?
This is a personal choice, one that entails your examining your own mortality in much the same way as buying life insurance or setting up a will. It is not a choice of how you will die but if, when you do die whether or not that death will have the possibility to help further other people’s lives. Signing up on the donor registry does not guarantee that you will be a donor, but it does indicate to your family, in an official capacity, what your wishes are for when the time comes.
Ask some questions. Think about it. For more information, check out DonateLife.net or ask me.
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Question: I’m writing a paper for a class on Physician Assisted Suicide, and just out of curiosity I’m wondering what your feeling are on the issue. I mean, you do sorta work in that arena. Sort of.
The big difference between what we do and physician assisted suicide seems to me to be the matter of choice. Though people might choose to donate when they die, they aren’t choosing when or how they die.
My short answer is that I’m fine with euthenasia in most regards save the spelling of it. Though, much like abortion, I think it’s the kind of thing only certain doctors would want to do and I think there should be at least two doctors in agreement, signing off, so to speak, on the procedure.
i guess my question is more, do you feel the government, in its infinite wisdom, should have the authority to control such an important decision as your right to die?
As of now, you have the right to refuse life saving treatments, causing death, but you cannot choose to end your own life with the aid of a trained medical expert.
I think there is also a lot of confusion because euthanasia and physician assisted suicide are not the same thing.
No real
Well, I’d be interested to know how you distinguish the two. But point taken.
Technically speaking, I don’t believe people have the “right to die.” But I mean this in the sense that a right is something that is meant to be protected by a society. When speaking of rights, one must speak of who is protecting/assuring those rights or advocating for them.
What would work for me is if two doctors agreed that someone had an terminal condition.
The complication is deciding at what point it is alright for the government to allow someone to die when measures can be taken to prolong their life. Since a government’s primary purpose is to protect life, careful work would have to be done to define why it’s okay for the government to aid in death.
Voluntary Euthanasia – when conducted with consent and by the physician, is termed voluntary euthanasia.
Involuntary Euthanasia – when conducted without consent by the physician, is termed involuntary euthanasia. Involuntary euthanasia is conducted where an individual makes a decision for another person incapable of doing so.
Passive Euthanasia – a patient refuses treatment which leads to his/her death.
Physician Assisted Suicide – when a terminally ill patient makes a decision to actively seek out the help of a physician to aid in suicide. In this case the physician often prescribes a lethal pill or injection which the patient takes voluntarily.
just some definitions…
Appreciated