Cathy Tan's List: organ donation

• You have the power to change someone's world by being  a donor. It's about living. It's about Life.

• United Network for Organ Sharing

• Organ donation
• Certain groups, like the Roma (gypsies), oppose organ donation on religious grounds, but most of the world's religions support donation as a charitable act of great benefit to the community. Issues surrounding patient autonomy, living wills, and guardianship make it nearly impossible for involuntary organ donation to occur. In issues relating to public health, it is possible that a compelling state interest overrules any patient right to autonomy.
• On teleological or utilitarian grounds, the moral status of "black market organ donation" relies upon the ends, rather than the means. Insofar as those that donate organs are often impoverished and those that can afford black market organs are typically well-off, it would appear that there is an imbalance in the trade. In many cases, those in need of organs are put on waiting lists for legal organs for indeterminate lengths of time — many die while still on a waiting list.
• While most first-world nations have a legal system of oversight for organ transplantation, the fact remains that demand far outstrips supply. Consequently, there has arisen a black market often referred to as transplant tourism.
• Organ shortfall
• A persistent issue relating to organ donation is the scarcity of organ donors relative to the number of potential recipients on organ donation waiting lists. No matter what laws and systems are in place, the demand for kidney transplants has outstripped supply in every country.
• In the United States, the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) states that the waiting list is about 101,217 people long,^[25] but about a third of those patients are inactive and could not receive a donated organ.
• demand for kidneys substantially outstrips supply.
• Even though there have been advances in medical technology and donation, the demand for organs still greatly surpasses the number of donors.
• On average, eighteen people die every day because the organ they required was not available
• Organ donors can decide which organs they would like to donate
• The average length a person will wait while on the list for a heart is 230 days. Since a heart can only survive approximately 4-6 hours outside the body UNOS will look at location and urgency to determine who will receive the heart. For a lung transplants the average waiting time is 1,068 days.
• The normal waiting time for a liver is about 796 days.
• Kidney transplant have the longest average waiting time. It takes approximately 1,121 days

• Approaches to addressing this shortfall include:

   
   
  • donor registries and "primary consent" laws, to remove the burden of the donation decision from the legal next-of-kin
   
  • monetary incentives for signing up to be a donor
   
  • an opt-out system ("dissent solution"), in which a potential donor or his/her relatives must take specific action to be excluded from organ donation, rather than specific action to be included
   
  • social incentive programs, wherein members sign a legal agreement to direct their organs first to other members who are on the transplant waiting list
• The Center for Ethical Solutions, an American bioethics think tank, is currently working on a project called "Solving the Organ Shortage," in which it plans to study the Iranian kidney procurement system in order to better inform the debate over solving the organ shortfall in the United States.
• People committing suicide have a higher rate of donating organs than average. One reason is lower negative response or refusal rate by the family and relatives, but the explanation for this remains to be clarified.^[33] In addition, donation consent is higher than average from people committing suicide

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• 最美好的生命礼物——器官捐献