Organ donation

[elettaria]

There's quite a fuss going on right now over a Dutch TV show that has proved to be a hoax, the Big Donor Show in which an actress posed as a terminally ill woman interviewing three candidates to see which one most deserves to get one of her kidneys. I'm not intending to discuss that here, though you can read a thoughtful discussion of it here. I'll just say that I find the idea extremely unpleasant and feel that there are better ways of raising the profile of organ donation. I'd rather talk about organ donation itself.

Like many people, I'd heard of it but not really thought about it much. ladyvivien changed that. Her mother has been the recipient of a donated kidney and she is extremely passionate about organ donation issues. There was a proposal at the time that organ donation should be made an opt-out system in the UK, so that unless people deliberately opted out they would be on the organ donation register. In case anyone reading this is not aware, there is a terrible shortage of organ donors. ladyvivien was in favour of the bill, which didn't pass. I wasn't, because while I do feel that something dramatic needs to be done to create a large enough pool of organ donors, I don't feel that your body belongs to the state and I believe that it should be a choice whether or not to be a donor. The system I envisage as ideal would present people with the opportunity to sign up as organ donors, for example asking anyone who registered with a doctor's surgery or got a driving licence (which would cover the vast majority of the population between them), and by this I mean giving them a form that made them tick a yes or no box, not just having leaflets sitting around the surgery. This would, I hope, increase the pool to a large enough size without forcing anyone, since many people, most I think, would in fact agree if they were asked, they're just not asked. And since few people really want to think about the possibility of their own death, let alone in gory detail (who wants to think about having their eyes removed?), people aren't that likely to go out of their way to sign up, they'll just avoid the topic while being vaguely in favour of it.

I signed up a while later, I think it didn't happen until something else prodded me and I'd spent a couple of years meaning to get around to it when there were the appropriate forms available. I signed up online in the end, which may be done at this link. I later proceeded to tell my parents about this in a way which I wouldn't suggest following. It was when I was reading up on human sacrifice for an essay on Titus Andronicus, in which a defeated enemy is sacrificed at the beginning of the play, and started wondering whether the Romans ever practised human sacrifice. My stepfather's a history nut, so I rang my parents to ask, and all this reading about removal of body parts reminded me that I needed to tell them I was on the organ donation register. My mother answered the phone, and the conversation went something like this:

Me: Hi, darling, how are you? Is C-- there? By the way, I'm signed up as an organ donor.
My mother [not taken it in yet]: Er, yes, here he is.
[Fascinating conversation in which C-- and I conclude that no, the Romans did not practise human sacrifice, and thus Titus' sacrifice of Alarbus was way out of line.]
C--: Lovely talking to you, I'll give you back to your mother now.
Mother: What the hell do you mean you're signed up as an organ donor?

This might not have been the best way to broach the subject. Thankfully we got it straightened out in the end, and while my mother is one of the people who really doesn't want to think about the whole topic, she respects my decision.

So anyway, however the topic is brought to light, I'd urge anyone who hasn't signed up as a donor already to think about it deeply, and if you decide that you wish to sign up, get around to it now - and then tell your next of kin in a suitable manner.

Comments

[ladyvivien.livejournal.com]

Good post. Thanks, m'dear.

I have no appropriate icon, but this one is funny.

[garpu.livejournal.com]

I'm an organ donor!

I suspect Catholics got their aversion to organ donation and cremation from y'all...I know my grandmother was horrified that my mom wanted to be cremated. Personally I'd rather be buried like a Trappist--dig a hole, wrap me in a sheet, and toss me in, plant some flowers and go have a party. No makeup, no embalming, etc.

[elettaria.livejournal.com]

Makeup and embalming on a corpse always gives me the creeps, and getting all dressed up feels odd as well. I think a lot of it is what you've grown up with as "normal", and for me that's burial within 24 hours in a plain shroud (and with old prayer books tossed in if their time has come).

I can't remember why Jews aren't wildly keen on cremation, though it's certainly permitted and the Liberals will go on (http://www.liberaljudaism.org/lj_wherewestand_death.htm) about how anything environmentally friendlier is a wise choice. I suspect a lot of it's down to the reason my mother cites, namely that "enough Jews have been burnt already". Aha, that link talks about the cremation business too. My mother was horrified that her mother wanted to be cremated, by the way, and vetoed her decision to donate her body to medical research, though this was from emotional reasons rather than religious ones.

Organ donation is permissible in Judaism, since saving life is the biggest mitzvah there is, though different denominations quarrel a bit about it. According to the link above, the Liberals are all for it (and happy with donating your body to medical research too), whereas the Orthodox only permit cornea donation (not a clue why, but I suspect it's not that rigorously followed). I've seen leaflets for each faith on the organ donation stand in hospitals, and I recall those as saying that organ donation was fine for Jews. I've just googled it briefly, and this article (http://judaism.about.com/library/3_askrabbi_o/bl_simmons_organdonation.htm) gives you an idea of typical Orthodox rabbinical quibbling. This bit's noteworthy:

Organ donation is permitted in the case when an organ is needed for a specific, immediate transplant. In such a case, it is a great mitzvah for a Jew to donate organs to save another person's life. Organ donation is not necessarily limited to dead people: Someone who can afford to spare a kidney, for example, may donate one to someone in need.

Yet in consideration of the prohibition against desecrating the body, it is forbidden to simply donate to an "organ bank," where there is no specific, immediate recipient.

I'm not entirely sure where organ banks come into play, but since there's a dreadful shortage of donated organs pretty much everywhere, I think you're fairly safe in saying that every donated organ will be urgently needed.

[elettaria.livejournal.com]

Oh bless, there turns out to be a Halachic Organ Donation Society (http://www.hods.org/English/about/mission.html).

[garpu.livejournal.com]

Oh right, now that I think about it, there was a story on "This American Life" about someone who was going to donate a kidney to someone else...I think it was their show on the 10 commandments.

[garpu.livejournal.com]

Interesting...

I remember reading a study about how the earth is losing free nitrogen rapidly because of embalming. (One reason why I don't want to be embalmed.) You also have to wonder what's going to happen to cemeteries, when all those coffins start leaking. I can't imagine embalming fluid is good for the environment...

Being buried with old prayerbooks would be cool, but since the breviarium monasticum is out of print and hard to find, I'd rather my breviaries go to someone who'd use them. ;) Same with my rosary. With my luck, they'd bury me with old copies of "Worship and Praise" or "Gather." (Both hymnals from the 1970's, which are dismal.)

[elettaria.livejournal.com]

It's done because Jews consider that anything with the name of God written on it is holy. Prayer books are meant to be kept on the top shelf, above all the other books, and generally treated with respect. So when they get too tatty to use, they're meant to be buried rather than normal book disposal, which means waiting until the next funeral and putting them in then. Bear in mind that not everyone owns their own prayer books, so synagogues usually have a largeish collection. I do love the idea of being buried with books. It doesn't happen for every funeral, though, just when there's a load of prayerbooks to dispose of at the synagogue, and if your own prayer books are in good shape when you die, they'll probably go to a family member or the synagogue.

When my Jewish community here held its first High Holy Days services a few years ago, we didn't have our own prayer books and didn't want to buy them yet because we were in the process of going independent (we started off as a satellite community for Glasgow Reform) and hadn't yet chosen whether to affiliate to Reform or Liberal. I was ringing my old synagogue to ask about borrowing some choir music, and they turned out to have some spare draft prayer books for the High Holies, which we nabbed and which were dead useful despite being slightly different from the current edition. (Yom Kippur is the day when all the non-synagogue-goers crawl out of the woodwork, you need loads of copies for then.) Inspired by this, I rang around every Reform shul in the UK, uncovering a second cousin in Bournemouth in the process. None of the others had any spare prayer books, and one shul said they'd only just buried a batch. Grrr.

Embalming's something I've only really thought about in the context of Egyptology. Is it that common? Such a strange idea, and as you said really not clever environmentally.

[garpu.livejournal.com]

*nodnod* That sounds familiar. Any object that's been blessed (so statues, rosaries, medals, stuff that's come into contact with the bread and wine for communion, stuff that's come into contact with any of the blessed oils, etc) has to be disposed of properly, either buried or burned. The sink in the sacristy goes directly into the ground for that very purpose. We had some oils go rancid, and not wanting to dump them down the sacristy sink, someone dug a hole in the garden and put them in. Statues are generally broken then buried in Catholic cemeteries. Books generally aren't blessed, although bibliomaniacs in the parish tend to snarf them up when they can.

Once when I was a minister of the cup, I had a guy sneeze on me after receiving the wine. I cleaned the stuff off the floor the best I could (go get some water, dilute it, mop it up, pour more water on the floor, get that up, then rinse out the cloth used to wipe it up in the sacristy.) But my shirt was hit by the sneeze. Had to go home, change my shirt, come back, rinse it out, etc. (The floor mess was caused because he spilled the chalice while sneezing.)

[elettaria.livejournal.com]

You're making me want to read Mary Douglas on concepts of holiness again, now.

Oh yes, I'd heard that books aren't considered blessed in Catholicism somewhere. It came up during a discussion on people handing out religious tracts in the street, which are likely to end up in the bin.

Not surprised at the book-snarfing. ghost_of_a_flea is a blameless atheist, but we were having fun yesterday discussing the idea of being buried with all of one's books in a non-religious sense. He'd need an extended-family-sized plot to get all of his in. This is partly because he is incapable of resisting snapping up books whenever remotely appealing ones appear before him at a decent price, and bear in mind he works in a charity bookshop *and* gets a discount there.

[king-laugh.livejournal.com]

Done. Thank you.

[elettaria.livejournal.com]

I'm so glad to hear it. ghost_of_a_flea recently signed up too. I'm proud of you both!

[finnygan.livejournal.com]

I signed up for all of it as soon as I turned 18 - I'm a blood donor, and should the need ever arise, I'm an organ and bone marrow donor as well. For some reason, I've always been very aware of this, although I don't know anyone who's ever needed an organ - and I'll try my very best to convince everyone I meet that they should sign up as well. I just feel that if you'd want to receive if you were ever in that situation, you have to be prepared to give. And while I'm not crazy about the idea of having my organs removed, I don't think I'd be in a position to care if it ever actually happened - and I want to be cremated anyways. Why burn things that other people could use?

However, my mother doesn't like the idea at all. My mother isn't even comfortable with the idea of blood donation. I don't think it's because she's really against it - I just think that she finds the whole idea of someone else's blood and someone else's organs absolutely disgusting. So while I don't think she'd go against my wishes, I have taken the necessary precautions - when I signed up, I checked the option where it says that your family does not have the right to veto organ donation. I don't know exactly how it works in the UK, but I do think it should be an active choice - it is something that would be taboo to a lot of people - and there's got to be better ways of doing than making everyone default donors, though I'm not sure how. Probably because it's so taboo - but for that same reason, I also think it's necessary that people have the option of saying that their family don't get to say no if they've already said yes.

As for the fake tv show - while I think it's always a good think to raise awareness around this kind of subject, it could have been done with a little more taste.

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

You know, it's interesting that your mother has such strong immediate repulsion to the idea of organ donation. My parents, religiously centrist, politically liberal American Conservative Jews, have "Sign up for organ donation!" on the list of Things We Do As Good Human Beings right next to "Remember to vote in every election."

[elettaria.livejournal.com]

Good for your parents. I'm a lot more liberal than my mother, she raised me in Reform Judaism (which is slightly to the left of your Conservative), but she's ended up Masorti (think you have that too, it's slightly left of Orthodox) and I've ended up Liberal (admittedly there wasn't much choice on that, there's the Liberal community here and the Reform one in Glasgow and everywhere else in Scotland is Orthodox). She's not really politically active or even that aware. You should hear her responses to anyone being queer. I mentioned to her the other day that ghost_of_a_flea found a book on same-sex weddings at the book fair recently and we sent it off to my cousin S, who recently got engaged to a lovely lady. My mother's response to that was to say, "I'm so glad you're not gay!" She knows bloody well that I'm bisexual and that a lot of my friends and loved ones are queer.

I think it's more squeamishness with the organ donation, though, and I admit that I told her really tactlessly. I still did a better job than she does any time she wants to discuss wills, when she gets all skittish and makes awful jokes and is a nightmare to deal with. She's had cancer, maybe that's one reason why she gets so nervous talking about anything related to death.