Good deed for the day

[andrewducker]

This is the UK transplant homepage. If you live in the UK please, please sign up for it. When you're dead you won't need your organs any more and other people will.

Since April 1st this year 633 people have received transplants. There are nearly 6000 people still waiting.

Comments

[kpollock.livejournal.com]

I'm sure that my mother would say NO! if asked if they coudl have bits of me. Mind you I suppose that now Sean is my next of kin, I could finally do it.

It should be the other way round. Organ donation should be the default, whilst letting folsk who really object can register to be exempt. Oh and your family shouldn't be asked either.

[andrewducker]

Well, not once you're over 16/18 anyway.

I'd certainly prefer it to be the default. But too many people have problems with the ick factor.

[cangetmad.livejournal.com]

I'm so sick of the "some people object because of X" thing: if your objection is so strong, then register it, and let the rest of us get on with being rational and saving other people's lives. Actually, my strong moral and personal objection to someone else being able to override my choice to be a donor is at least as valid as some Jehovah's Witness's moral objection to transplants. I don't see a single valid reason not to have a "default donor" setting, even though I'm fortunate enough that both my actual (my partner) and legal (my mother) next-of-kin support that decision.

I'm registered, anyway. Also, with the bone marrow register who, by the way, always need more male donors.

[andrewducker]

Oh, I agree with you. It should be done. I don't think there's the political will or momentum at the moment to do so, but I suspect there will be over the next decade or so.

[wordofblake.livejournal.com]

If you believe it should be done automatically then it's a really short step to saying people don't have the right to refuse. After all they'll be dead at the time. But if I can leave a will saying who gets to have my table, silverware, flat etc then why wouldn't I deserve a say in the distribution of my fleshy bits?

What reasons would be acceptable for saying no? If the answer is no concievable reason then what does that mean for people who say no? They have less rights than others?

[wordofblake.livejournal.com]

The problem with that is that it's *active* to take bits out of people, the assumption is that the status quo will be passive, and that means leaving things as they are.

I don't want my bits removed, and I'm not sure I'd trust paperwork as a shield against it. What if my "non-donor" form got lost or mis-filed?

[kpollock.livejournal.com]

Fair point. But I object to my bits NOT being used when I have no further use for them, and that most people are lazy shits who might not mind, but are too idle to fill in forms.

Out of interest, why do you not want (as you put it) "bits removed"?

[cangetmad.livejournal.com]

Exactly. Why is their objection more valid that my objection (which is akin to yours - I won't be using it, so why be a dog in the manger)? And messing with bodies after death is routine for funeral purposes, anyway, so it's not exactly as if what currently happens is a totally passive option.

Actually, a totally passive option would be to leave the body lying where it fell until the deceased person's wishes could be ascertained, however long that took. For public health reasons, we tend not to leave bodies to lie about in the street. There are good public health reasons to allow "default-transplant", too.

[wordofblake.livejournal.com]

I think it'd be creepy to have my corpse desecrated.

[kpollock.livejournal.com]

'desecrated'??? When you are dead you are dead. Game over. Your corpse gets broken down into molecules by various fungi and bacteria and these components get used to build other plants and animals etc. You will not be there to mind what the hell goes on.

you think "it'd be creepy???" that's it? Try explaining that to some poor sod waiting on an organ transplant. Make a cute innocent kid if that kind of thing presses your emotional buttons.

[wordofblake.livejournal.com]

Note that I am making no attempt to talk you out of donating your organs and back off. I don't want to and my reasons don't have to make any kind of sense to you. It's my perogative until donation gets made mandatory.

[lee-lou.livejournal.com]

That's me all signed up.... I always carried a donor card but was never offically on the register, so yay.