As of last Tuesday, there were over 116,000 people on the national organ donation waiting list, with more being added every day. Of these people, more than 74,000 of them are “active candidates,” meaning they are eligible to receive replacement organs at any time.
As incredible as these numbers are, it’s the number of donors that is even more interesting. From January to July of this year, there were only 8,280 donors, resulting in 16,586 transplants. That’s a lot of people left waiting.
It’s obvious to everyone that premature death is unfortunate. It’s incredibly sad that people die in accidents every day. However, these things do and will continue to happen. If we have the technology and ability to use the organs of the deceased, why not save some lives in the process?
I think that a lot of college students, myself included, spend little time thinking about death or sickness. And why should we? We’re in the prime of our lives, and worrying about such heavy and inevitable things all the time would only detract from our quality of life. However, I don’t think this mindset should prevent anyone from getting the little orange “Donor” sticker on their driver’s license.
A single donor can save up to eight lives. In addition, dozens of other people can benefit from tissue, bone marrow and eye transplants. Yes, organ and tissue donation can be somewhat disgusting to think about, but I struggle to come up with even a single valid reason for not agreeing to it.
Regardless of personal beliefs, there is no reason for a person to keep vital organs once they have died. For lack of a better analogy, it’s like throwing out a broken TV remote with perfectly good batteries in it. You don’t need your organs where you’re going, so why not leave them for someone who does?
The thousands of people on the waiting list are engaged in a stressful fight against the clock. It’s absurd that a person should have to die just because somebody else was scared of or disgusted by organ donation. Yeah, it’s a free country, but I see it as a duty I owe to my fellow humans.
Agreeing to organ donation won’t condemn you to a horrible early death, but if something bad ever were to happen, at least some good would come of it.
