organ donor persuasive essay

Importance of Organ Donation Essay (Critical Writing)

Most people see dilemmas when handling matters concerning organ donation and transplantation. In a real sense, this issue can, and still sounds difficult if we don’t try to be realistic. Depending on our different cultural beliefs, many people oppose the idea of organ donation. However, some view organ donation as a heroic decision and socially acceptable activity based on the notion of helping to save a life. Such positive notions and beliefs about organ donation must be advanced to increase the number of those signing up for organ donation programs in Michigan and other states. The government has tried its best to help and boost organ donation through a number of initiatives, and people would be helpful if they considered the importance of organ donation and responded positively. In Michigan, people willing to donate organs can now freely do so by starting to give their names to the Michigan Organ Donor Registry (Department of State, 2008).

Considering the huge number of people in need of different body organs today, and the many that are dying each day due to organ problems, a socially upright member of our society should not consider it a big issue to donate an organ to a recipient who is in danger of dying.I really consider it a life-saving process that everyone should also heed. Data is alarming on the number of organ recipients. According to the UNOS-United Network for Organs Sharing-research, every 16 minutes, a new name is added to the national transplant waiting list. The same source indicated that there were about 53,000 patients waiting for transplantation. That was by 1998. A huge number of Americans totaling 55,000 are awaiting organs recipient. In 1996 almost 1000 people died waiting liver transplantation in America and more than 9,800 are waiting it currently.This means that without having good hearted people willing to donate organs to the needing recipient there is a danger of loosing many people each year as a result of organic problems (Prange, 1998). Currently, Michigan is in dire need of volunteers who wish to save life by rendering their organs for donation.

It’s actually important and very necessary to do anything to make sure that you help to have somebody survive death.According to our different religion backgrounds, we are taught the importance of life and that’s why I consider it important to help those in need of different organ problems, by rendering our parts to help them live. It is time people did away with the negative notions and questions posited against organ donating, and possibly consider it in a different perspective-such as if they were the recipient. When handling such issues like organ donation, many questions may arise in our mind, such as what would happen to our tender bodies after some of our organs are taken out? It’s actually a shock to many, but if we look into our society, many people who have donated organs are there and breathing well. It is amazing that someone may think twice while donating an organ yet the same person would not do so to receive one.

In my opinion, we all should some times be at a position of doing what we would like others to do for our selves. This is an important initiative that would make our society to grow. It’s always good to help those in need than to need help. That does not mean that we should not care while donating our organs. We are still responsible and whole responsible for our lives. After all, no body has an extra organ and therefore the issue must be viewed at the perspective of donor’s sacrifice. Therefore, there are different things that we should consider before donating our organs to recipients. Such include our current health status and the status after donation. By doing so, we are at a better position of examining it, and coming up with a clear decision on whether to give or not. For example, there would be no need for a medically fit person to donate a body organ to save life and after some few days die. Also the state of mind as far as the donation is concerned. Is your mind ready to help by donating? Brain is the controller of every thing in the human body and so it might happen that without the consent of brain, some things as crucial as surgical operations that are a must during transplantation would bring out issues. But what could save a great deal is the changing of our attitudes to accommodate organ donation in our lives.

The final decision to donate an organ may be influenced by a wide range of factors. It is a good idea to consult medical experts before engaging yourself in organ donation for medical advice. Doctors may advise you to go ahead and donate, or drop your idea if at all your body is not at a position of donating. They may also advise on the type of meals that a donor of an organ should feed on to avoid future injuries in the body.

Sharing ideas of your intention to donate with friends and relatives is another important issue. Members of the family willing to donate an organ or at a position to must be spoken to before the donation (Hubpages, 2010), and if a positive word is given, this person may give in. By doing so one is at a position of hearing their views as far as this mater is concerned.

Having known scientific facts that an organ of a person about to die with an early harvesting and proper preservation can be transplanted to a recipient, I find it important to be done, but with the owners consent. Saving a life is good than to loose two. And if one is in any way going to die in few hours, I think it’s necessary to use that chance to ensure that another life is saved. It is a good thing for people to know the importance of organ donation as a way of saving live.

Organ donation is the most tremendous gift one can receive today. Everyone should put this into consideration. It’s a socially upright thing to think of becoming an organ donor, since nobody knows if you may estate from being an organ donor today and tomorrow becomes an organ recipient.

To those that have in one way or the other received or given their body organs, they portray a good heroic example of human acts since, for example, one organ from one person can save up to 50 people (MedlinePlus, 2009). This can lead to saving many lives that would otherwise have been lost. In Michigan, a positive attitude towards organ donation would assist the many people in need, and would be a heroic move.

I want to call upon people to save life today by signing for organ donation. This is not enough. A call to every one to join in donating and campaigning to mobilize the mass on the importance of it, and this is an extended hand. Further more, such disasters can only be eliminated by nothing lesser than rendering our bodies for this cause.

Department of State. (2008). Organ donation. Web.

Hubpages. (2010). The importance of organ donation. Web.

MedlinePlus. (2009). Organ donation. Web.

Prange. M. (1998). The importance of organ donation. Web.

• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2023, November 1). Importance of Organ Donation. https://ivypanda.com/essays/importance-of-organ-donation/

"Importance of Organ Donation." IvyPanda , 1 Nov. 2023, ivypanda.com/essays/importance-of-organ-donation/.

IvyPanda . (2023) 'Importance of Organ Donation'. 1 November.

IvyPanda . 2023. "Importance of Organ Donation." November 1, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/importance-of-organ-donation/.

1. IvyPanda . "Importance of Organ Donation." November 1, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/importance-of-organ-donation/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Importance of Organ Donation." November 1, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/importance-of-organ-donation/.

• Advantages and Disadvantages of Organ Transplantation
• Organ Transplantation and Donation
• Organ Donation: Postmortem Transplantation
• Organ Donation: Donor Prevalence in Saudi Arabia
• Motivation in Human Organs Transplantation
• The COVID-19 Impact on Organ Donation
• Unequal Racial Access to the Transplantation
• The Ethics of Organ Donation in Modern World
• Organ Donation: Ethical and Legal Considerations
• Blood Donation and Its Advertisement
• The Healthcare System in Nigeria and the Universal Tri-Level of Care
• Policy Evaluation Reform as Related to EHR in Ontario
• Goals of Healthcare Policy and Prevention of Epidemic
• Effects of HIV and AIDS on Young Children and Women
• HIV Counseling and Testing: Lifetime Treatment Program

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

• Advanced Search
• Journal List
• Public Health Rep
• v.128(4); Jul-Aug 2013

The Power of Organ Donation to Save Lives Through Transplantation

Organ and tissue donation is more important than many of us realize—for society and for the individuals it directly affects. Today, there are nearly 118,000 individuals waiting for an organ transplant to live healthier, more productive lives (Unpublished data, Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network [OPTN], April 2013). For some people with end-stage organ failure, it is truly a matter of life and death. Add to these the thousands more whose lives will be improved through tissue and cornea donation and transplants that can help them move better, see better, and live better.

Donation affects more than the donors and recipients. It also affects the families, friends, colleagues, and acquaintances who love and support those in need of transplantation, and who benefit from their renewed life and improved health after transplant. For my part, I have experienced not once, but twice how donation and transplantation affects individuals.

Twenty years ago, my wife, Donna Lee Jones, died in a severe automobile accident. Her death was a shock, and my family did not know what to make of our tragedy. Then we were offered the opportunity to donate her organs and tissues for transplantation. While it did not lessen the pain of her loss, it brought comfort to us knowing that out of our tragedy, some good would come, and others could receive the gift of life. Because of her donation, several people received a new lease on life: a man in Tampa, Florida, received her heart; a teenage boy in Washington, D.C., received a kidney and pancreas; a hospital custodian received her other kidney; a woman in Pennsylvania received her liver; and her corneas went to a young woman in Baltimore, Maryland, and a government worker.

Four years later, my 20-year-old daughter, Vikki Lianne, was struck by a car and died. Losing a spouse was tragic enough, but the pain of losing a child cannot be expressed. Falling back on our previous experience, we decided to donate Vikki's organs and tissues for transplantation. Again, several individuals benefited from her gift: a mother of five children from Upstate New York received her heart; a widow with four children received her lung; a 59-year-old man from Washington, D.C., who was active with a local charity, received her liver; a widower with one daughter received her kidney; a working father received the other kidney; and her corneas went to a 26-year-old man in Florida and a 60-year-old woman in Pennsylvania. And we, her family, took comfort in the idea that Vikki's legacy was one of life and giving.

Organ donation provides a life-giving, life-enhancing opportunity to those who are at the end of the line for hope. And the need for organ donors is growing. When Donna Lee died in 1992, there were 27,000 people on the transplant wait list. When Vikki died just four years later, that number had grown to 47,000 (Unpublished data, OPTN, January 2010). As of April 5, 2013, there were 117,812 people waiting, with hope, for an organ to become available (Unpublished data, OPTN, April 2013).

One way to expand the number of organs available for transplantation is to expand the number of donors, through carefully and safely considering individuals who in the past were not included. The guideline in this special issue of Public Health Reports provides a scientific, evidence-based process to assure a balance between organ safety and availability for each individual on the transplant wait list. As our knowledge and scientific capabilities regarding safety and availability grow and evolve, donors who in the past would not have been considered as donors are now able to provide the gift of life to others.

This guideline will help improve organ transplant outcomes, leading to more individuals being able to live healthier and longer lives. The science and evidence are clear and will improve the safety of organs, balanced with a clear and conscious regard for donors and recipients. It is the human aspect of donation and transplantation—helping people. It is the right thing to do.

Rear Admiral (Ret.) Kenneth Moritsugu is a former Acting Surgeon General of the United States.

This article was supported in part by Health Resources and Services Administration contract #234-2005-370011C. The content of this article is the responsibility of the author alone and does not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the Department of Health and Human Services.

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

The Organ Is Still Working. But It’s Not in a Body Anymore.

Perfusion keeps a donated organ alive outside the body, giving surgeons extra time and increasing the number of transplants possible.

By Ted Alcorn

On some level, the human liver in the operating room at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago was alive. Blood circulating through its tissues delivered oxygen and removed waste products, and the organ produced bile and proteins that are essential to the body.

But the donor had died a day earlier, and the liver lay inside a boxy plastic device. The organ owed its vitality to this machine, which was preserving it for transplantation into a needy patient.

“It’s a little bit science fiction,” said Dr. Daniel Borja-Cacho, a transplant surgeon at the hospital.

Surgeons are experimenting with organs from genetically modified animals , hinting at a future when they could be a source for transplants. But the field is already undergoing a paradigm shift, driven by technologies in widespread use that allow clinicians to temporarily store organs outside the body.

Perfusion, as its called, is changing every aspect of the organ transplant process, from the way surgeons operate, to the types of patients who can donate organs, to the outcomes for recipients.

Most significantly, surgical programs that have adopted perfusion are transplanting more organs.

Since 2020, Northwestern has had a 30 percent uptick in its volume of liver transplants. Nationally, the number of lung, liver and heart transplants each rose by more than 10 percent in 2023, one of the largest year-over-year increases in decades.

Without blood flow, organs rapidly deteriorate. That’s why clinicians have long considered the ideal organ donor to be someone who died under circumstances that ended brain activity but whose heart continued beating, keeping the organs viable until they could be matched with recipients.

To minimize injury to organs after their removal from a donor’s blood supply and before they are connected to a recipient’s, surgeons used to cool them to just above freezing, significantly slowing their metabolic processes.

This extends the window in which organs can be transplanted, but only briefly. Livers remain viable for no longer than 12 hours, and lungs and hearts closer to six.

Scientists have long experimented with techniques for keeping organs in more dynamic conditions, at a warmer temperature and perfused with blood or another oxygenated solution. After years of development, the first device for preserving lungs via perfusion won approval from the Food and Drug Administration in 2019. Devices for perfusing hearts and livers were approved in late 2021.

The devices essentially pump blood or an oxygenated fluid through tubes into the blood vessels of the donated organ. Because cells in a perfused organ continue to function, clinicians can better assess whether the organ will thrive in a recipient’s body.

Bolstered by that information, transplant surgeons have begun to use organs from older or sicker donors that they might otherwise have turned down, said Dr. Kris Croome, a professor of surgery at the Mayo Clinic in Florida. “We’re going after organs we never would have before, and we’re seeing good outcomes,” he said.

Perfusion also eases the grueling process of organ recovery and transplant, hourslong surgeries that doctors often conduct against the clock, beginning in the middle of the night and completed in back-to-back succession.

Now surgical teams can recover an organ, perfuse it overnight while they sleep and complete the transplant in the morning without fear that the delay will have damaged the organ.

Perhaps most important, perfusion has further opened the door to organ donation by comatose patients whose families have withdrawn life support, allowing their hearts to eventually stop. Each year, tens of thousands of people die this way, after the cessation of circulation, but they were rarely donor candidates because the dying process deprived their organs of oxygen.

Now, surgeons are perfusing these organs, either by removing them to a machine or, in a lower-tech manner, by recirculating blood in that region of the donor’s body . And that has made them much more appealing for transplant.

Since 2020, the number of livers transplanted after the circulatory death of the donor has doubled, according to an analysis of data from the United Network for Organ Sharing, the nonprofit that runs the United States’ transplant system.

Once, surgeons never used hearts from such donors because of that organ’s sensitivity to oxygen deprivation; in 2023, thanks to perfusion, they transplanted over 600.

By tapping this new cadre of donors, transplant centers said they could find organs more quickly for the excess of patients in urgent need. Dr. Shimul Shah said the organ transplant program he directs at the University of Cincinnati had essentially wiped out its waiting list for livers. “I never thought, in my career, I would ever say that,” he said.

One obstacle to the adoption of the technology may be cost. At the rates currently demanded by device makers, perfusing an organ outside the body can add more than $65,000 to the price of a transplant; smaller hospitals may not be able to justify the upfront expense.

One of the leading companies, TransMedics, raised its prices substantially after regulators approved its device, prompting a stern letter from Representative Paul Gosar, Republican of Arizona, who wrote: “What began as a promising medical equipment innovation and an opportunity to increase transplantation nationwide is now being held hostage by a public company that has lost its true north.”

But some surgeons said that the technology might nonetheless save money, since patients who receive perfused organs generally leave the hospital quicker and with fewer complications, and have better medium- and long-term outcomes .

Surgeons are still exploring the upper limits of how long perfused organs can survive outside the body, and as substantially as the technologies are already altering transplant, some say this is only the beginning.

Dr. Shaf Keshavjee, a surgeon at the University of Toronto whose lab was at the forefront of developing technologies to preserve lungs outside the body, said the devices could eventually allow doctors to remove, repair and return lungs to sick patients rather than replace them. “I think we can make organs that will outlive the recipient you put them in,” he said.

Dr. Ashish Shah, the chairman of cardiac surgery at Vanderbilt University, one of the busiest heart transplant programs in the country, agreed, calling that “the holy grail.”

“Your heart sucks,” he said. “I take it out. I put it on my apparatus. While you don’t have a heart, I can support you with an artificial heart for a little while. I then take your heart and fix it — cells, mitochondria, gene therapy, whatever — and then I sew it back in. Your own heart. That’s what we’re really working for.”