…mine, to be exact. Or a lung. Or an eye. Or a kidney. Talk about a great way to leave a legacy!
Usually a legacy gift is considered to be money or property left in one's will by bequest. But is leaving an organ any less a legacy - especially to the recipient?
We recently read an op-ed piece by Sally Satel in the New York Times entitled "Death's Waiting List," in which the author argues for granting incentives for the donation of human organs if we really want to increase the supply.
Currently, only 30-40% of Americans say they have designated themselves as donors on their driver's licenses or state-run donor registries. The author (a kidney recipient herself) says at least 92,000 people are waiting for organs, and the situation is very bad in big cities where the ratio of organs to patients in need is the worst. The current wait in big cities is five to eight years, and that wait is expected to double in the next five years. And, says Satel,"Someone on the organ list dies every 90 minutes."
Our nation's organ policy requires that organs must be given freely and makes it illegal for anyone to sell or acquire an organ for valuable consideration. Yet we already have accepted markets for human eggs, sperm, blood, and surrogate mothers.
The author asks why organs are not included in this list, and so do we. "Many transplant experts…are proposing initiatives that would allow people to give their organs in exchange for tax breaks, guaranteed health insurance, college scholarships for their children, deposits to their retirement accounts, and so on."
The author goes on to conclude, "Paying for organs, from the living or the dead, may seem distasteful. But a system with safeguards, begun as a pilot to resolve ethical and practical aspects, is surely preferable to the status quo that allows thousands to die each year."
We agree. Everyone wants to leave a legacy of their time on earth. What more profound legacy could a person leave than passing on the gift of life to another person? And why should we not offer people who might not otherwise take this action the incentives to do so?
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