Personally, I believe that it’s ignorant, and totally ego-centric, to object to organ and tissue donation for transplants. Without question, I agree with bio-ethicists who say that we need to have ‘opt-out’ policies, and that harvesting our bodies for transplant and research material is a moral obligation.

Personally, I plan to donate my entire body to a medical school; when studies are complete, the remains will be cremated, with the ashes commingled with those of other donors — i.e., men and women of different ethnic origins, and of different religious and socio-economic backgrounds.

Once, an employee at a University anatomy department told me that she felt whole body donation was the ultimate, secularist mode of disposition, as everyone from Presbyterian ministers to Pagan Priestesses (in life, registered nurses) had been dissected side-by-side in gross anatomy lab. In other words, service to other people was more important than petty theological squabbles.

Today, their ashes lie in the University cemetery plot, as one – thus, Death is about equality, and personal extinction.

Although it may frighten some people, donation is an admission of our mortality, and the relinquishment of our ego-centered consciousnesses and superstitions. If a body part can extend, or improve, the life of a living person, it is immoral not to donate.

I wish we did have an “opt-out” option for donation. I’m sorry but the literally life or death need of the gravely ill should outweigh the irrational antsy feeling of the healthy, especially considering they won’t be around to care at the time. That way we could do away with this thing of approaching family. As it stands today, your next-of-kin has the final say on what happens to your organs, not you. Because it is true that your body is your own, I guess I can’t really expect people to have no choice in the matter, but I think people should be forced to proactively give notice that they would rather their organs rot than potentially save the life of 5 sick people.

Would their be mistakes? Yes, of course there would be. But for me it’s a hell of a bigger travesty and outrage for a 40 year old man with heart disease, a 30 year old mother and a 50 year old storekeeper with kidney failure, a 43 year old man with lung disease and a 16 year old girl with liver cancer to all die because someone felt “icky” about their organs being donated.

AJ, that frankly is the pot calling the kettle black. And, again, don’t complain when fundies act the way you do, next time. OK?

I haven’t repeatedly defamed medical professionals, told the sick they should remain so, the dying tough shit. Last time I checked. It’s strange you keep bringing up the fundamentalists, because they also come here and post paranoid rants about their irrational beliefs like you.

For the record, I’m talking about all the constant demands we’re bombarded with. And having read that it’s policy in many hospitals to do just that when a patient dies and, personally, I think that’s pretty cold. So sorry your loved one is dead; may I harvest them for their organs now so someone else’s may live?

Demands? Actual hospital policy? Beginning with “may”? Oh wait, that’s right, you’re lying about the medical profession again. I can assure you, counter to your paranoid delusions, personnel in charge of obtaining transplant consent do not say that as a rule, and they don’t make constant anything, let alone demands. That’s a hateful, foolish, vile lie.

I hope to hell it’s never the opt-out b.s. in this country. Too easy to lose the paperwork and harvest people who don’t want to be. It’s a personal choice. If you want to sign up, that’s your choice. This is mine and I’ve made damned sure my next of kin knows it.

Apparantly too easy to lose paperwork, but too hard to forge paperwork, or disregard it.

Just out of decency and respect to the dead.

The dead aren’t their dead bodies. You can respect the dead, you don’t need to respect the meat bag. Respect the living, treat them with decency.

Well, I say it’s pretty cold not to think how the deceased’s loved ones would feel coming face to face with the donee.

Is ignorance bliss? You think this is like the movie Face/Off? You think that any loved ones would ever come face to face with a recipient and know? More bullshit excuses.

Others have politely disagreed with me and earned by respect by doing so. You don’t have enough class. And, name-calling isn’t going to convince anyone.

For the record, I’m talking about all the constant demands we’re bombarded with. And having read that it’s policy in many hospitals to do just that when a patient dies and, personally, I think that’s pretty cold. So sorry your loved one is dead; may I harvest them for their organs now so someone else’s may live? If that was my daughter or grandson, they’d have to get a restraining jacket to protect the doctor having the fucking nerve to ask such a cold-hearted question at such an inappropriate time. I was suggesting a more humane alternative but, believe it or not, I do see your point so I’d say they just have to content themself with organ donor cards signed ahead of time.

I hope to hell it’s never the opt-out b.s. in this country. Too easy to lose the paperwork and harvest people who don’t want to be. It’s a personal choice. If you want to sign up, that’s your choice. This is mine and I’ve made damned sure my next of kin knows it.

As for the hand and the face, you know shit happens. Sucks but that’s life. There is no god.

And no one’s walking around with my face after I’m dead. Maybe that’s part of my problem with it. They know no limit. Maybe they should. Just out of decency and respect to the dead.

You say it’s heartless to deprive that person of that face. Well, I say it’s pretty cold not to think how the deceased’s loved ones would feel coming face to face with the donee. Where we really disagree is that I think this is one place wherein science goes too far.

Death is a fact of life. Deal with it.

1) Not only is pressurizing for organ donation against many code of conducts in many countries, quite a few countries have an opt out organ donation policy. It’s wrong to blame a whole profession for something they have no part in.

2) Many, perhaps most, organ donations come from accidents where patients might not be admitted by their next of kin. People don’t like considering the worst case scenario when they enter hospital with a loved one with a serious injury. And you call people asking for organs after someone has died sick? Asking people to consider their loved ones death when they first come into hosptial after a shocking accident is inhuman.

3) If you think there’s nothing more “you” than your dead body than there’s something seriously wrong. All the atoms in your body can change and you can still be you. You can lay all the ingredients of a human out on a table but it doesn’t mean shit. A living person with a mind is worth a damn. A dead body is worthless in comparison.

4) You’ve persauded me ChameleonDave was right. You are scum. Anyone who can disparage someone who hasn’t got a face or a hand getting one is not right in the head. Anyone who says that a person should just die instead of getting a heart transplant is amoral scum.

“Organ transplantation and donation were once strongly limited by Jewish law because they were experimental and endangered life, . . . ”

Hmmm. We’re talking 20 years ago we had that conversation. Not *that* long ago. Interesting.

What does Judaism have to say about organ donation?
Rabbi Dr. Goldie Milgram, http://www.ReclaimingJudaism.org

Living a mitzvah-centered life is the spiritual essence of being a Jew. Organ transplantation and donation were once strongly limited by Jewish law because they were experimental and endangered life, today these are essential, successful medical life-saving methods. Accordingly, organ donation has become a mitzvah chiyuvit, an obligatory mitzvah, fulfilling Judaism’s great mitzvah of pikuakh nefesh, that of saving a life.

So long as it will not significantly risk your own life, surgical removal and donation of organs such as a lung or a kidney by a living donor is a mitzvah kiyumit, a praise-worthy but not obligatory mitzvah, since with all surgery there is some danger and distress to the donor.

(emphasis mine)

I disagree with Muggle’s stance on organ donation except on one point. It’s his/her body. I don’t believe in an afterlife so when I’m dead, I’m dead and I don’t see any point in letting the bits rot away instead of using them. But if someone does feel strongly about that – whether they believe in an afterlife or not – then that’s their right. I don’t think anyone should be coerced into organ donation.