Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

The Importance of Organ Donation

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Organs that can be given by living donors include the kidney and portions of the liver, lung, intestine, and pancreas. Kidney transplants are the most common; they have now been done for more than 50 years. The first one was done in 1954 in Boston at what is now Brigham and Women's Hospital.

The care for living organ donors – before after after the transplant – is top-rate. The screening that is done for living donors can, in fact, detect other problems that can be caught earlier than they might be otherwise. And, if the living donor's remaining organ declines in function, that donor moves to the top of the transplant registry list.

In addition to considering living donation, we should all strongly consider donation after death. We should consider the question – does it make sense to bury or burn perfectly good corneas, heart valves, or tendons? This link has more information on how to become a donor.

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Comments

  1. This is a very personal issue for me as well, and I wish you, your wife, and your wife’s donor the best of luck post transplant.

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    p>This raises a very interesting political issue, however: the notion of opt-out organ donation — whereby cadaveric organ donation is the standard, while allowing individuals the change to opt-out if they so choose.

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    p>The BBC had an article  a few months ago that suggested most Britons would support such a system, but I suspect most Americans would reject this idea given our more libertarian inclinations.

    • I may not have any use for my organs, but they’re mine.  Personally, I choose to offer them up when I die, but my body parts are mine.

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      p>Maybe combine it with mandated insurance… agree to be an organ donor, get 1% off your rates for life!

        • I’m an organ donor according to my driver’s license, and I’ve had “the organ donor talk” with my spouse and my parents, so everybody knows that I do consent to the use of my organs to help repair other people.

      • I think all expensive health care should be taxed, to pay for normal health care.  Instead I think we have the opposite system, where small common surgeries and tests that are in fact cheap are seen as profit centers and cost more than they should, and expensive surgeries do not cost the true cost.

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        p>And what about banning organ harvesting completely?  It’s not only creepy to see people dying as a business opportunity or as a way to improve one’s own life, if it is paid for by insurance, it is part of the spiraling health care costs.  Everyone gets to have all of their organs replaced forever?  That’s crazy.  I think we should consider people’s bodies off-limits, and organ harvesting macabre and selfish, so that we accept that our bodies might fail us and we might even die.

        • This was of course the one of the Silber Shockers, and he got zeroed for it too.  But I’m still wondering if these things are free for people with health insurance.  If so, they are surely part of the explanation for ballooning health care costs, since they are becoming more and more common, and apparently to you, still not common enough.  Will there be an end to this?

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          p>I think if someone gets some new entitlement expanding surgery paid for by their insurance company, they should have to pay something out of pocket for that too, as a tax that the state would then spend on expanding basic health care to all people.  They shouldn’t just go on a cruise around the world and buy a Porsche.  If they can’t afford that tax, they’d have to scrape it up with benefit rock shows like all my uninsured friends have had to do.

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          p>I also think college tuition should be taxed.  If a person can afford $40,000 a year, they can afford to pay another few thousand to the state.  If they can’t, they find a $37,000 school, or maybe schools lower their tuition a little bit.

    • As I understand it, most insurance will cover the costs associated with a cadaveric transplant.

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      p>A living-donor transplant is more complex, and often times the recipient will bear the not insignificant anciallary costs for pre-Tx testing, travel, etc.

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      p>I’m in a situation now where these are very real questions for my family and myself, and recognize that a living-donor transplant could very well be the road to personal bankruptcy.

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      p>I’m not sure what the tax implications are or — frankly — what you’re getting at by such a question.

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      p>If you’re interested in learning more, the New England Organ Bank should be able to answer any questions.

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