Organ & Tissue Donation: How You Can Help (Part One)

Today BlogCatalog is having an organ donation awareness "blogathon."

And certainly that fits well with this blog's pro-every-life, pro-nonviolent choice (nonsectarian, interfaith, secular) mission here. Every year, millions of human beings, especially but not entirely in the Two-Thirds World, die preventable deaths for the sheer lack of organ and tissue donations--not because current medical knowledge can't save them. And when people die, there goes their right to nonviolent choice, away with their right to life. Even when and if they do survive with their life-threatening conditions...these conditions can keep them from making the sexual and reproductive choices they would really prefer to make.

For me, this issue gets pretty personal. Not only do I know people who live because of donations, and others who have died for lack of a match in time...Although I am doing relatively OK at this moment, I have lived a long time with serious, potentially degenerative medical problems that someday may threaten my life. I am at much heightened risks of kidney failure and leukemia, two otherwise fatal problems that can be successfully treated through kidney transplantation on the one hand, and bone marrow transplantation on the other.

Someday, dear readers (if any), one of you all may save my life! And even if you don't save mine, precisely, you might save the life of somebody else who also needs, wants, and deserves to live as full and as long a time as possible...but who is right now embroiled in the crisis that for me is still a hypothetical worst-case scenario.


Today almost every world religion praises organ and tissue donations as expressions of great love for one's fellow human beings. And if you're atheist or agnostic, well, I'm sure your ethics include love for your fellow human beings...and what more certain & tangible afterlife is there than the one(s) you could give through organ and tissue donation?

A special note to people of color: In the US, Great Britain, and some other countries, people of color are seriously underrepresented in the pool of available organ and tissue donors. On top of helping your fellow human beings, you can help to make justice and new life for your racial/ethnic community.

In my next post, I will list websites of places where people can go online and register as organ and tissue donors.