Your life is a living hell. Your kidneys have failed and your blood is pumped out of your body and filtered through a dialysis machine almost every day of your life. Your only hope of salvation is through organ donation. But wait! There's hope. If you are being treated within the University Health System, the odds are in your favor. For the fourth year in a row, the Health Resources and Services Administration has awarded the prestigious Medal of Honor to the University Health System for outstanding organ donation rates. University students should take this accolade as an inspiration to become more involved in the organ donation movement.
How important is organ donation? Here are some numbers: One name is added to the national organ transplant waiting list every eleven minutes; eighteen people die every day waiting for an organ that never comes; 7,000 Americans per year die on the organ waiting list. According to Donate Life America, an independent organ donor organization, there are over 100,000 people currently on the organ waiting list. And last year, 28,000 lives alone were saved through organ transplants. That still leaves over 70,000 people waiting for help. Organ donation is critical for these individuals.
So why is organ donation so rare? Unfortunately, organ donation is a concept mired in vague misconceptions and lack of knowledge. One big concern is the role of religion. Many people believe that most major religions, i.e. Catholicism, Judaism, and Islam, strictly prohibit the idea of organ donation, citing the need for a fully intact body during burial. This is just not true. For example, in his article entitled "Religious Justifications for Donating Body Parts," William F. Mays, a nationally renowned ethicist, remarks that "burial is no aid to salvation" in the Christian faith. He also notes that "Christian faith in the resurrection does not present an insuperable obstacle to the extraction of organs from the corpse."
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