France is shifting to opt-out organ donation as of this year!
I’ve always been a proponent of this. Like vaccination, I don’t believe non-medical excuses should ever be accepted for opting out.
Meanwhile, estimates are that autonomous cars would reduce the organ donor pool by 1/5th: they’re a major source of dead but otherwise healthy bodies.
Apparently the far majority of all organs needed are kidneys. They constitute almost the entire waiting list in the US.
I used to oppose organ donation for stupid reasons, but I wised up at some point when I realized I had no rational reason to oppose it. So harvest my parts when I’m gone, I say!
I like the opt-out approach, personally, though I would like to see some exclusion based on medical inadvisability. Someone with hep C, for example, should probably not be registered as a viable liver donor - but a modern country with a useful medical system should be able to have that information available.
I hope they have some system in place to quickly test people for blood borne diseases before the transplant (hep C, HIV, etc)
Does this apply to anyone who dies in France or only French citizens?
Obligatory:
Eh, they can have my gubbins if they want them. I figure, if that’s how it all goes down and there’s enough left to donate, I’m not using them, someone else might as well.
This is relevant to me! I have been on the organ donation list since I got my driver’s license, but in recent years, I have gone on some immuno-suppressant medication. This means that I can’t give blood anymore, because they don’t want to give someone who’s system is already compromised some blood that can’t effectively fight off infections.
Currently I don’t know if this also means my organs are no longer viable for donation thanks to that medication, but I do keep my blood donor card in my wallet with a list of current medications stuck to it. That way, ideally someone will know if it’s worth the time to harvest my guts before spending the money and time to do it, only to find that they aren’t going to be viable in most people.
I do need to follow up with my doctor and find out for sure if “organ donor” is something I should just remove from my license, or if they can still make some use out of me.
I think there’s still some organs you can donate, corneas for example, but I don’t even play a doctor on TV so what the fuck do I know.
I don’t think it’s much of a concern about whether people with organs that are not in great condition should be on the donation list. Let them be on the list. If they want to donate your organ after you die, they will definitely be looking at your medical record to see if the organ is a good fit for the recipient. Better to be on the list, have them check, and then reject your guts than for you to be not on the list in the first place. Even if say, your liver is awful, your eyeball might still be good.
I am more concerned about the issue of dying in a foreign land. If I die in the not-US I still want to donate my giblets. It would be pretty sad if the State Dept. retrieved my body and then my kin had to deal with it now that it’s been dead too long to be useful.
I know in the states, for blood donations, they test like 30 donations at once (take a drop from each mix together and test) using extremely sensitive tests and if they get a positive, all people in the mixing are quietly banned from donating blood forevermore. This gets them around HIPAA by making it so that at no point does someone unauthorized have personally identifiable info + medical data on someone without consent.
My instructions have long been the same:
Same. But is there a better option than cremation for item 3? Is there some safe, cheaper, and more environmentally friendly way to dispose of leftover human bits besides fire?
Still fire, but potentially more environmentally friendly?
I am the epitome of not caring about this. Unless I still live in some form or another to deal with my meat bodies disposal I couldn’t care less what happens to my corpse by literal definition.
Living me now thinks more people should abide by Nuri’s instructions or some similar variant of them and they’re what I’ll write on some piece of paper. But said and done, I don’t care if my body is fucked by the thing that killed it, dissolved in acid, left in the woods, or dunked in formaldehyde and put in an expensive box on expensive land with an expensive rock on top. Dead = can’t care.
The Bios Urn is the epitome of silly greenwashing. It’s no more environmentally friendly than just scattering ashes in the woods or dumping them in the hole where you plant a tree. It is WORSE, in fact, because of the manufacturing of all that packaging. It’s totally BS designed to make people FEEL good without actually DOING anything.
[quote=“hmtksteve, post:3, topic:238”]I hope they have some system in place to quickly test people for blood borne diseases before the transplant (hep C, HIV, etc
[/quote]
The French health care system is close to the best if not the best communist health care system. If they’re anything like in Australia all your records are set aside and available. An obvious error like this flags you in the database and you’re pulled off of all the lists.
LOL they don’t have your medical record, they could kill way too many people. Also many organs are time critical, you don’t just pack them on shelves.
Well you must have another condition which requires the immuno suppressant, the base condition could be much worse in a transplant scenario for the receiver.
I can’t give blood either as I take a drug regularly but am still an organ donor because even though my liver will have had more wear and tear from dealing with my drugs it can still function once transplanted. Also in transplants you tend to want to drain the blood of the donor from there, and introduce a test serum spun down from blood for a possible candidate. However it is different for different organs.
This sounds silly to me, as the donor don’t you just sign that right away? Also you’re losing 29 people who got off their ass to donate blood.
Exactly the same as me!! I’m donating my cadaver for teaching med / pathology students because learning on foam models is stupid.
I’m an organ donor, except for my eyes, I would want an open casket funeral and I don’t think having my eyes glued shut would help with that.
There’s an interesting podcast featuring Tina Rosenberg from the New York Times, talking about the only country in the world that has a waiting list of people wanting to give kidneys, not receive them. The progressive country of, IRAN?
If you don’t have the time to listen, it has two of her articles on the subject in the shownotes.
[quote=“JCDenton, post:16, topic:238”]
I’m an organ donor, except for my eyes, I would want an open casket funeral and I don’t think having my eyes glued shut would help with that.
[/quote]They do that anyway, because muscle relaxation would otherwise have your eyes half open rather than all the way shut. Or if not glue - hey, not everybody does it the same way - they put in these little hard plastic devices called “Eye caps”, which are basically like a contact lens, but with little outward facing spikes, they stick it on the eyeball - or what there is of it - and then lift the lid, pull it down, and place it in position. The little spikes stick in, and hold the eyelid shut, and also ensure you keep that “eye” shape if anything has caused a loss of intraocular pressure…
I dated a mortician… I now want to be cremated.
I know it’s stupid, and it shouldn’t matter, but man getting spikes in my eyeballs does not sound nice
You will be dead.