Save lives after death with organ donations

By Divya Malik

As I sit quietly inside Stanford hospital, hearing the machines beep and the nurses' whispers, I anxiously wait for my cousin's doctor to rush in and tell me there is a heart for her. While her deformed heart has allowed her to lead a normal life, it has been failing her in the past few months.

Now, she is in dire need of a heart transplant.

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the average waiting time for a heart transplant is 80 days. But the waiting time continues to grow as more people are being added to the waitlist. A name is added to the organ transplant list every 11 minutes.

According to the United Network for Organ Sharing, as of April 18 there are 107,014 people on the wait list for a transplant; 84,466 for a kidney, 15,929 for a liver, 3,164 for a heart, 1,455 for a pancreas, etc. As the number of people on the waitlist climbs, it is disheartening and troublesome to know that most will never receive a transplant.

A person dies every 18 minutes because they did not receive the transplant their body so desperately needed.

Organ transplants, the surgical removal of an organ or tissues from one person and the placement of it in another person, have been successfully conducted since the 1950s. It was surgeons at Stanford hospital who made the major breakthrough of conducting the first successful heart transplant.

Currently, kidneys, livers, hearts, lungs, pancreases and skin are able to be transplanted. While almost any organ can be donated, not every person is eligible to donate. Most deceased organ donors come from those individuals who have suffered irreversible loss of all brain functions and are clinically considered brain dead.

According to the UNOS, approximately one percent of all deaths in the U.S. are brain deaths. But most of these individuals are not organ donors.

With 90 percent of Americans supporting organ donation, why do only 30 percent sign up for organ donation?

Do we not have time to sign up? Or, can we just not stand the fact that our organs could be left behind in another's body?

Individuals offer various reasons as to why they do not wish to donate their organs. Many think that doctors will not try their best to save their lives if they find themselves in life or death situations. However, first priority for the doctors is the person they are working with. Organ donation is only discussed if the individual is already deceased.

Others feel organ transplant goes against their religious beliefs. However, Catholicism, Protestantism, Judaism and Islam all affirm that the act of donation is one of charity and love and declare that one should donate to save another. Religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism neither support nor condemn the act; it is up to the discretion of the individual to donate their organs.

People also assume they are not eligible for donation because they think they are not in the best health. A doctor's decision to use an individual's organs is based on medical criteria. While some organs cannot be used for transplant, others can indeed be used to save lives.

An individual is not capable of disqualifying him or her self from the list; that should be left to doctors.

None of the responses provided are legitimate reasons for not donating one's organs. Our moral obligation to help those in need does not stop after we die. According to transplant surgeons, one person can save up to 50 people if they donate their entire body.

I personally never gave a thought to organ transplant before my cousin was admitted into the hospital. I thought, "I'm not going to die yet, why do I need to worry myself with thoughts about organ donations?" But I realize now it's not about me, it's about the individuals that I can help save.

If more people committed themselves to organ donation, people like my cousin could have another chance at life.

Divya Malik is a senior psychology and political science double major.