Sunday, March 14, 2010

Israel Puts Forth Innovative Organ Donation Law

Makes sense to me.

Israel is launching a potentially trailblazing experiment in organ donation: Sign a donor card, and you and your family move up in line for a transplant if one is needed.

The new law is the first of its kind in the world, and international medical authorities are eager to see if it boosts organ supply. But it has also raised resistance from within Israel’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish minority.

I admit, however, that I’m a bit callous when it comes to my own inevitable death and the remains that will be left behind.  Cut me up, donate my organs, burn me, do medical experiments on me… whatever.  I’ll be dead and not too concerned about the flesh I will leave behind.

(6) Comments
Posted by Owen at 2236 hrs
Foreign Affairs

  1. Yes, it makes pure & absolute sense, as long as you are not Orthodox or Hasidim.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on March 14, 2010 at 2330 hrs


  2. Yep. cut me up. Cut everyone up. You should be forced to opt out if you think that it’s more important for your organs to rot in the ground than to save someone else’s life.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on March 15, 2010 at 0718 hrs


  3. FL;

    While I am a designated organ donor, it is with the full understanding that most who elect to go this route do not, in fact, directly sanve or improve any one individual’s life. The vast majority of designated organ donors end up in cadaver labs an medical schools.  Just a head’s up for people that do trhis thinking they are more than likely to end up as parts of several different people, giving old lady Johnson a pair of eyes, Mr Jackson a new liver, and little Janie a new heart.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on March 15, 2010 at 0801 hrs


  4. I am not very knowledgable when it comes to Orthodox Judaism, or Hasidism, but if their faith precludes them from donating organs, wouldn’t it also preclude them from being a recipient?  And if that is the case, how is the law discriminating against them?

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on March 15, 2010 at 0804 hrs


  5. elovrich -

    I understand that most organs don’t end up in someone else’s body, but without a large pool of available organs, those who need them, aren’t as likely to get them. If prospective surgeons want to practice on my dead body, good, we don’t want them practicing on living folks.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on March 15, 2010 at 0829 hrs


  6. Your only REAL concern about donations is that you are actually dead before they start to carve.

    That’s kind of a fine line, and not all MD’s are extra-careful about that.

    Posted by dad29 on March 15, 2010 at 1316 hrs


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