Broadsheet

That's absolutely horrible. I'm sorry for the loss of your friend.

 

Not so fast, I'm not so quick for medical schools to carve up my body for the amusement of a bunch of barely legal medical students, nor will I allow my tissue to be used for some rich-guy's penis enlargement, nor will my liver be used to replace one that is damaged by years of alcohol abuse via someone who has enough connections to rank highly on the receivership list.

No organ donation for Cham. A good idea gone that has gone violently wrong. There is so much abuse it's horrifying

 

Even more important than signing your card is talking to your family about your wishes. I don't know about the U.S., but in Canada organ donation must also be approved by next of kin, regardless of what your driver's license says.

And hey - why not use it an as excuse to encourage others to nake the same decision?

 

cham: I can not, nor will I ever, edit, prohibit, or restrict, comments on my blog, but you have crossed a line of decency and respect that I will no longer tolerate.

 

Broadsheet, do the research. Each one of the instances I have listed are real examples of people who signed organ donation cards and ended up in medical schools, tissue donation programs and questionable organ donation programs. I made that post in complete seriousness. Know what you are getting into before heading down to the MVA to sign off. I actually carry a notorized copy of a letter in my purse informing people that they are never to donate my organs to anyone. My family knows of my wishes and are in complete agreement.

If you want some links as proof of what is going on I will happily do some research and get them for you.

 

Cham: I don't know you, but you're wrong, at least where it matters. To start with, if you're dead, who cares what happens to your tissues?

More importantly: there's no way a cornea or a kidney or a heart or a lung or skin or any other frequently transplanted organ will be used "for some rich guy's penis enlargement".

As for livers being used to replace damaged ones, that's what transplants are FOR. It doesn't really matter whether they got that way from disease or vice, the recipient is still likely to die without a new one. In any case, I defy you to demonstrate that David Crosby is anything but the exception.

The "barely legal medical students" jab is the worst by far. Cadaver dissection is the main teaching aid for medical students, and I can't even remotely fathom how else you expect them to learn human anatomy. If some of them engage in gallows humor, who can blame them? It's more than a little horrible to be confronted with a corpse and asked to cut it up, even for future doctors.

Successful doctors MUST find a way to distance themselves from the humanness of their patients in order to function, and if they can't all do that while maintaining some fervent religious respect for the dead, I find that I really don't care.

It's your choice, obviously, and it's up to you if you want to make it for foolish and selfish irrelevant reasons. But don't expect anyone even tangentially involved in the Life Sciences to read a comment like that without outrage.

 

I am an organ donor. The way I look at it was summed up for me perfectly a few years ago when I went out to lunch with an older colleague at my then-job. There was a panhandler near the restaurant, and I thought he was a scammer, but my coworker gave him a couple of dollars, much to my dismay.

"What he does with that money is between him and God now," she explained, and it all made sense to me. We do things in good faith---that's what good faith means, not doing things of which we are absolutely sure of the outcome. The other person may not hold up his or her end of the bargain, but all we have to be concerned about is holding up ours.