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Tyra Stowe
Prof Wilhelm
English 112
9 February 2016
The Gift of Life
I have never experienced donating an organ in my lifetime, but if it was the only option to
keep someone I care for alive, or create commensalism between me and someone in need of an
organ, I would be more than happy to do so. I am kind of an organ donor, when I say that, I mean
that, after I die, I would rather have my healthy and strong organs be donated to someone in
desperate need than to be wasted in the ground for eternity. In 2008, my 25 year old cousin
tragically passed away. When there was an autopsy done on her body she had a few organs
worthy of donation, and her immediate family was given the option to donate or not. Afterwards
she was able to successfully donate her liver to someone in critical need. I was 13 when she
passed away and her organ donation made me receptive to the idea. As soon as I was of age to
get my license, I knew I wanted to be listed as an organ donor. It is this fact, of knowing that my
organ donation can help to save lives in the future, that brings a refreshing twist to the thought of
death.
Putting myself in a family’s position, where someone important to them critically needs
an organ to survive, is heart wrenching. My best friend’s mother has a severe kidney disease
caused from diabetes. If she was to not find a matching donor she would have probably only had
a year left to live. With that in mind, it is scary to think about possibly losing someone that
means so much to me, and the stress of possibly not finding a solution to the problem only makes
the situation worse. Thankfully, she did find a worthy kidney donor and her surgery is scheduled
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for this coming April, but there is still the possibility of the donor backing out or something
going wrong during the procedure. The possibility of saving her life and watching her children
grow up, for her, and commonly for anyone else put in a similar situation, it is worth the risks.
Donating organs can be a scary thing to think about, but the thought of dying only
because someone was not willing to receive an organ donation is equally, if not more terrifying.
This paper will positively investigate the problem of organ donning, the rising need for healthy
organs, and why there are not enough donators. I will explore the different options when
considering becoming an organ donor and some of the disadvantages.
As the years move forward, the human body is becoming vulnerable to more and more
life shattering diseases, making the need for organ donors much greater. Kidney and liver failure
are the most common deaths accompanied from organ diseases which results in a higher desire
for them. For a procedure like a kidney transplant, tissues have to match in order to have a
success story, which is yet another reason the need for kidneys is so extreme.
The search to find a dedicated organ donor is becoming more difficult. A survey taken
stated that more than 70 percent of people say they are willing to donate an organ and only 15
percent of them actually follow through with their promise. In addition, of the families of people
who have already given consent to donate their organs before their death, only half of them
actually followed through with the deceased organ donor’s promise. This causes much false hope
for people barely hanging onto their life. People across the world are usually intimidated by the
risks of organ donning, especially those possessive of their organs or those who practice a
religion that does not believe in the procedure, this tends to limit the amount of actual donations
that occur. Roman Catholics, Episcopalians, and Liberal and Orthodox Judaists, for example, are
not allowed to participate in organ procurements due to their belief that organ transplants create
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controversy of a form of murder or living through someone else’s body. Depending on the
religion, some thoughts are weather they are staying true to their soul, which determines which
direction they will go in the afterlife. This could also be considered “cheating death” which to
some that believe it, means the person receiving an organ to survive is not following the plan
their life originally should have went. Some people, with the exception of certain religions, find
the act of organ transplants weird, as if it is strange for other people to survive with their organs
functioning inside of them. Regardless, even though these particular people’s organs could make
a tremendous decrease in the amount of organs available for transplants, they are off limits
without the persons consent.
Live donning and dead donning are the two ways to sustain life for someone on the organ
waiting list. Live donning is only available during certain circumstances. This special situation
typically happens when a person’s family member is in need of a transplant, (live donning most
common in kidney transplants). In this case, a family member can choose to donate their
functional organ to a family member in need, allowing the risks of the procedure, with the
extremity of death, to be a possibility in their life to keep their family member alive. Dead
donning, on the other hand, occurs when someone, before his or her death, agrees to becoming
an organ donor. With that in mind, whichever way they pass away, their organs can be taken for
donation and given to someone on their local organ waiting list. Before their organs are retrieved
for donation, the consent of their families must be asked of from the hospitals. Regardless to if
they agreed before their death or not, the hospital will ask their families for reassurance that
organ donation is the best choice for their loved one.
Although the rate of organs in need is constantly increasing, so are the success rates of
organ transplants. Within ten years, the success rates for kidney transplants alone have increased
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from 60 to 96 percent. Majority of all donations come from victims that have died in an accident,
after the consent of their family has been received by the hospitals. The rise for organs is going
to be consistently rising, unless someone’s religion or personal belief is against organ
transplants, every functioning organ helps and can save a life in the end. The unexpected can
happen at any given moment; the thought of being an organ donor if anything traumatic were to
happen to me is reassuring and gives me a comforting outlook on something so tragic.
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Work Cited
Barwinsky, Jaroslaw. "Raising the Dead: Organ Transplants, Ethics, and Society." Canadian
Journal of Surgery 46.5 (2003): 391-. ProQuest. Web. 5 Mar. 2013.
This article covers the assessment of patients before organ transplants, both the one receiving
and the donor. It also covers the topic of the waiting list for the organs, including local waiting
and national waiting. This article talks about the diversity of organs needed across the nation and
how in different areas different organs are needed more than others. “Occasionally among certain
groups of our society or in certain regions, the notion of preferential selectivity, based on social
or economic status, creates strong criticism and anger.” Eventually, this article will help my
paper cover the idea of the government possibly creating a national waiting list. This article also
gives insight on Munson’s survey, and gives useful statistics about organ transplants nationwide.
Feldstein, Paul J. Health Policy Issues: An Economic Perspective. Chicago, Illinois: Health
Administrative Press, 2007. Print.
This book only had one chapter I actually used information from, chapter 29, “Should Kidneys
and Other Organs Be Bought and Sold?” This section of the book mainly focused on the need for
organs and the benefits to buying/selling organs. Even though I did not specifically focus on the
market of organs, the information I collected from this resource was mainly the benefits to organ
transplants and the increase in improvement of lives if more people became organ donors. This
chapter will be important to my paper in the end because it discusses options the government
should consider for nationwide organ transplants.
McGrory, Carolyn H., and Linda Wright. Organ Transplantation. Applied Ethics in Nursing
(2006): 183-. ProQuest. Web. 6 Mar. 2013.
There are many ethical issues attached with organ transplants, this article very briefly covers the
main disputes. There are about 20 ethical problems with organ donations. Majority of the article
talked about live donations, dead donations, and the consent of the donor and their families. It
informs the reader of the difference between live donations and dead donations, including the
purchase of organs through the black market. Someone in need of any organ can legally purchase
an organ through a black market in a different country other than America, bring it back to
America with them, and have an organ procurement procedure performed on them. However, it
is at their own risk to purchase black market organs, infections, death, and failure can all be a
result accompanied with this risk. This article is important to my paper because it allowed me to
gather information about the options donors have if they consider becoming an organ donor.
Miller, George W. Moral and Ethical Implications of Human Organ Transplants. Illinois:
Charles C Thomas Publisher, 1971. Print.
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Throughout this book, it really gave insight on organ transplants throughout real life. This book
gave a large outlook on how serious the need for organs in America really is. The amount of
people passing away daily due to not finding a viable organ donor is unhealthy. Religion is also a
topic within this book, including the beliefs of Jehovah Witnesses to Catholics. It includes the
risks accompanied with organ donations, “.5% risk for an organ donor.” (42). This book will be
very important to my paper because it focuses on the main idea, the growing need for organs.
This book also includes enlightening success stories and gives a positive outlook on organ
transplants, unlike some articles that only focus on the negative. Majority of the book talks about
different situations in organ transplant history and the consequences that were faced.
Veatch, Robert M. Transplant Ethics. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2000.
Print.
This book covers majority of everything there is to know about organ transplants. A lot of the
book covers the topic of defining when a donor is pronounced dead, and the issues with consent
of the families before the donation can occur. It also covers the procedures during organ
transplants, with failure and success stories, along with an entire in depth summary of the organ
transplant process from beginning to end. Lastly, this book talks about the allocation of organs
and who is to make the major decisions during the process of organ procurement. This book will
be important to my paper because it gives a very good description of the ethics involved in organ
transplants. “The ethics of organ transplantation naturally divides itself into three general topics:
deciding when human beings are dead, deciding when it is ethical to procure organs, and
deciding how to allocate organs once they are procured.” (xi). As I continue writing about this
subject this book will be of more use because it has all the basic information I need to master the
topic.