Re: donating bodies for study.
People willing to donate their body to science get a highly dignified final resting place, right? WRONG. One word: landfill.
They either end up in the trash, or in a mass grave with all the other “used” cadavers. 100x creepier than organ donation, IMO.
I don’t know about giving my body to science. If I donated my body to the medical school, it may be the only chance I’ll ever have of getting a roomful of cute med students to paw all over my nekkid body.
Just thought I’d add that in addition to being an organ donor, I have done a lot of research in this field. There is a single organization in the US that coordinates all organ donation called the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS). They are a non-profit in Virginia, and their Web page is:
http://www.unos.org
Some interesting things you might want to know is that appoximately 20,000 transplants are done per year which has remained fairly constant, while the number of people waiting has steadily increased. Charts on this page will tell you exact numbers but it’s around 65,000 or so still waiting. The organization charges health organizations $375 per person they add to the list and as already stated, the actual costs of the operation, and all other charges are paid by the recipient’s insurer. No charge to the donor AT ALL! And in case anyone is wondering, kidneys outnumber all other transplants almost 2 to 1.
The truly sad part is all the money UNOS has to spend in education to dispell urban legends that your organs are harvested by EMTs (along with your gold fillings), or that there are operating teams in the back of Tijuana bars waiting for you to get drunk so they can steal your kidneys when you pass out. UNOS actually just started a major advertising campaign (mostly posters in malls) that cost them $38 million to get people more interested in the idea of organ donation which is apparently easier to do during the holidays.
If you donate to Stanford, they give you back in a year, don’t throw into some landfill.
lvick, they put the body on a table, all the specialists stand around it and its sliced from stem to stern and they harvest. Grosses me out.
But then all you organ donators, why don’t you donate while you are alive? AYou don’t need two kidneys or all that liver…
Coffeecat, Diceman, Handy, let me explain something to you. Dead is dead. You’re upset about the possibility of having organs removed from your body after death. What do you think is going to happen to those organs if they’re not removed? If I’m in a position to know these things after I die, I figure I’ll be happier with my organs inside another human than I would be with them inside some worms.
I have a donor card…but my understanding is that many organs can only be used if taken from the body so many minutes after death…and age does play a big part in it…I don’t think that it’s as much a point that people don’t care as it is that young people don’t think that they have to worry about dying…so they don’t think about doing the donor card thing…and then older people know that they organs are probably too worn out to be used…so they don’t get the card either…sort of a catch-22 deal.
I would donate in an instant, but can’t. 
I had Hep when I was 12 (We think it was the fact I spent a lot of time in the woods and creeks near my house playing). Is also why I can’t give blood.
>>Being Chaotic Evil means never having to say your sorry…unless the other guy is bigger than you.<<
—The dragon observes
I appreciate one thing from this thread.
I have made it clear to my family that I wanted my body parts donated to anyone that could use them. But after reading this thread for the last few days, I looked at the back of my drivers license and I hadn’t checked the box on the back. I had on the original but not on the renewal sticker. It would have been a real waste if the time lost by not having that box checked had meant some things could not be used.
Actually, between having the X marked on your license & telling your family, telling your family is absolutely the most important thing.
If they aren’t sure, the X on the driver’s license can help them know that you want your organs donated, and help them make the decsion you would want.
I know of a few people who still harbor suspicions about less effort trying to save them, who don’t indicate their preference on a driver’s license, but who have made their wishes very clear to their families. That is a reasonable way to deal with this, even if their suspicions are unfounded.
Sue from El Paso
Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.
As far as quality of care goes, I’ve observed that the best chance to save the patients life and the best chance to save the most valuable organs is the same. It’s ridiculous to think that they won’t try to save your life if you’re a donor because they’d risk losing the organs most prized at the same time. Having seen the process from start to finish, I can tell you it’s a no brainer.
Handy,
I’ve accompanied my patient in to OR for the harvest and I can tell you it’s not much ickier than some of the stuff they do in the ED while your still, technically, alive. And ya want to talk about what the undertaker or the coroner does? Sheesh,
Larry
My mother recently died at the ripe old age of 80. Many years ago she made arrangements for her body to be donated to the local medical school. She was delighted with the idea that medical students would have the opportunity to learn from her body after her death. Her body was picked by the medical school immediately and embalmed, and we were told that when they were through with her (which might be several years) she would be cremated and the ashes returned to us. We held a memorial service for her, and plan to hold another when we receive her ashes. One of my sisters has made the same arrangements, and the rest of my family are organ donors. (Gee, I guess we better watch out - someone might decide to wipe out the whole family to get our organs!)
What I found surprising was that, apparently, the medical school is no longer thrilled with such donations. When her arrangements were made years ago, there was something like a $10 registration fee for the paperwork - now it costs several hundred dollars for them to accept you.
Why? Does anyone know?
Talk is cheap because supply exceeds demand.
Standford said it was free, they even come and get it.
Little, I’m not stupid, I know your point, but my family would prefer me in one piece, thank you. Yes, I suggested the science thing to them & they are the ones who have to deal with the feelings later & I respect their feelings.
handy, I understand your point but how would your family feel if you were dying for lack of an organ because there weren’t enough donors?
As a follow up on the “x” on the drivers license I mentioned earlier, how significant is that? I thinking of a trauma situation like a car accident. Does it allow the hospital to harvest organs if no family members are present? If so, how long would they wait before they would go ahead and start harvesting the organs. How long could they wait before there wouldn’t be much point.
These are very real questions, since I only have one blood relative in Texas and he is a 21 son that doesn’t live with me. Besides that I have 2 ex-wives and several step-kids by them that are considered my kids but are blood related. How close of a relative would a person have to be to make such a decision?
Jim, those are some good questions.
Say a person has a terrible accident, comes into the hospital, and is shortly thereafter declared brain dead. (That process alone takes a few hours; the doctors will run several lengthy tests before they will officially declare you brain dead.)
If family is available, the organ donation people will then ask them if they would like to donate your organs. If you’ve checked “yes” on your driver’s license and the family says “no”, you won’t be a donor. As Majormd pointed out, you must let your family know your wishes and hopefully they’ll abide by them.
They can’t take your organs without permission. We recently had a guy who was declared brain dead on our unit, and we had no way to contact his family. We heard a rumor from his employer that the guy had an ex wife and some kids in Mexico, in a little village (we didn’t know the name of the village) with no phone. The organ donation people wanted his organs, but they would have had to get a court order. It was unlikely that they would have succeeded in that, but meanwhile the guy was on life support and the hospital was eating the cost of keeping this dead man breathing. In the end, his heart simply stopped all on its own and the case was closed.
If you don’t have an easily accessible next of kin, you should appoint someone as your power of attorney for medical care. This is crucial not only for donating or not donating your organs, but for any time you may be incapacitated and unable to make your own decisions.
Say you’re in a car accident and you sustain such a terrible head injury that if you survive, you’ll be a vegetable forever (not brain dead, but just a vegetable). Would you want the doctors to do everything possible to keep your shell of a body alive? Or would you want them to provide only basic care and let nature take its course? Only you know what you’d want for yourself.
Choose someone to be your power of attorney for medical care (this doesn’t give them the ability to manage your finances or anything else; it just allows them to make your medical decisions if you’re incapacitated). Tell the person exactly how you feel about these various issues. The paperwork is simple.
Thanks, Holly. If I understood correctly, the “x” on the drivers license indicates my wishes but doesn’t give permission to go ahead.
Suppose this happened on a Friday night and even the Power of Attorney person wasn’t anywhere to be found in a reasonable length of time, you indicated that the hospital is going to keep me somewhat alive if posible until they do find someone. Is that true?
Also, can they go ahead and take the organs based on a phone call, or does someone have to sign for it. I’m thinking of a long distance call that the person would still be hours away.
Wow, neat posts. Two things I have to add:
It’s my understanding (feel free to flame/debunk) that folks from Southeast Asia put special religious emphasis on their liver, which would explain why some folks would be iffy on organ donation.
I got pulled over once by an Amazonian state trooper. She was going to let me off with a warning, until she saw that I had written ‘penis’ under ‘organs to be donated’. Some folks have no sense of humor.
From Hell’s heart, I stab at thee-
Not exactly. This was the most seriously screwed up case I’ve personally seen in the ICU. We (the nurses and hospital administration) were pushing to take this guy off the life support ASAP. Like I said, brain dead means dead; you do not have to have permission to take a brain dead person off life support because there is no “life” to support. We felt it was disrespectful to the patient to keep him on life support needlessly. The organ donation people, however, wanted the guy kept on life support until they could get a court order. This DID happen on a weekend, making that proposition nearly impossible. There was no way this guy’s heart was going to keep beating until morning, much less through the weekend.
We argued that it was unfair for the hospital to spend thousands of dollars to maintain the bodily functions of a dead person, especially since the chance of recovering any viable organs from this guy was slim to none. Faced with the threat of losing their potential donor, the organ donation people countered with the declaration that they would foot the cost from the moment the patient had been declared brain dead. They could not, however, begin the process of getting ready for donation without consent.
Further complicating the situation was the fact that we didn’t even know if this guy was an American citizen. We eventually found out that he was a legal alien. I don’t know what the legal implications of that are.
So, to answer your question, the hospital will probably not keep your body going indefinitely in the hopes of finding your next of kin and getting consent for donation. On the other hand, not having an available next of kin or power of attorney is guaranteed to cause a tremendous amount of mess for everyone involved, and chances are your personal wishes are going out the window.
As far as I know (I’m not absolutely sure), consent for donation can happen over the phone. We routinely get consent for surgical procedures, Do Not Resuscitate orders, etc., from family members over the phone. The only difference is when phone consent is given, two nurses have to witness it instead of just one.
Holly, interesting statement of how they
( the medical community) cannot take your organs without your permission. Whilst in England in the newspaper there was a huge brewhaha of a hospital that removed the organs of dead children ( dying of other causes) and transplanted them said organ into desperately ill children.
I forget all the numbers or exact location, but it had been going on they think for years. I don’t know how this story came to light or the hospital/doctor(s) got busted. Personally, during that grief stricken moment of losing my child to say, an auto accident, I probably wouldn’t sign their organs away because I was not thinking rationally or if I was in said car , would not be physically able to do so. But if I found out months/years later about it, it would not bother me as much as some parents have gone nutzo over learning this. Especially if it help another child live.
Yes, I understand there are lines that cannot be crossed, but dead is dead. These children were dying anyway and the physicians did not withhold treatment from the child. Mandatory donation will never fly in this country because most people are squeamish to discuss about death, much less sex.
i’ve always said that if one planned their funereal like they plan for a wedding, then it would not be such a big deal and give the other family members a sense of comfort knowing what you, the deceased wanted and had it prearranged.
Good lord willing and the creeks don’t rise, if my body/organs are acceptable for donation at the time I join the invisible choir above, I have my signed donor card and my family knows my wishes.
I have taken it one step farther:Whenever my inlaws watch my son for a couple of days, they have an emergency form (citing doctors, meds/allegeries/insurance info, etc), permission for them to act on our behalf if we are not reachable AND should death occur, that we would like our son’s organs to be donated.
Morbid as it sounds, knowing that some other family could receive comfort in a time of crisis would offer some comfort to me.
The early bird gets the worm but it’s the second mouse that gets the cheese.
You’re a rare person, Shirley, who has the foresight to contemplate such things.
Most people refuse to think about their (inevitable) death, as if not thinking about it will somehow prevent it from happening, or as if thinking about it will jinx them.
I certainly wouldn’t condone mandatory organ donation; though I promote donation I fully respect the decision of many of my patients’ families to reject donation. No one should be pressured to donate.
On the other hand, I think Belgium has a good system: no one is forced to donate, but it’s assumed donation will occur unless the patient or family does not want to do so. In our system, the family is faced with the decision to donate or not immediately upon learning of their loved one’s death. This is not a good time to make such an important and emotional decision. We recently had a husband and wife involved in a bad car wreck in which their 4 year old child was killed. Though the parents were also injured, the dad seriously, they had to decide what to do at that most tragic moment.
Often, we see families refuse donation even when the deceased person had made it clear that he or she wished to donate organs.
Two years ago on Christmas eve, my friend Susan and I took care of a woman who was declared brain dead after a car accident. The woman had checked the back of her driver’s license and indicated to her family that she would like to be an organ donor. One of the woman’s daughters refused to give consent for donation, however, and the donation was going to be cancelled. As the daughter said, “I want her to die naturally. I want our family to be there when her heart stops beating.”
My friend Susan told her, “If you donate her organs, her heart doesn’t have to stop beating. Part of her will live on.”
The daughter then consented to the donation. The family wrote to me later and told me this decision had eased their grief.