I’ve had an organ donor card in my wallet for as long as I can remember and I’ve always made it very clear to my loved ones that I want all my organs to be used when I die.
My question is, given that I only need one kidney, would it be better if I were to donate the other one right away rather than after my inevitable demise?
Obviously, my organs won’t be used in the unlikely event that I die in some unrecoverable way, like being lost at sea or something. And there’s always the possibility that a close relative might need a kidney at some point, so I should arguably save it for them.
Is there some other reason to do it now?
You’ve got 2 kidneys. You generously give one to someone in need.
You have 1 kidney. You now have a single point of failure, where you had redundancy before.
IT guy here, just in case that might have gibt unnoticed.
ah, but[1] if you donate a kidney you go to the top of the queue
you’re losing one when you don’t need one, and receiving one when you do
insurance salesman here[2], just in case that might have gibt unnoticed
to the best of my knowledge ↩︎
obviously not ↩︎
Source? When they proposed to do this for blood donors, it got shut down in a hurry.
of course they do: they've only got one kidney, so it's more important for them to get a replacement quickly
alright, i was being facetious. a cursory search [says(https://healthmanagement.org/c/icu/news/organ-donors-who-need-kidneys-go-to-top-of-transplant-list) this, but it’s the states only, and i have no idea if it’s true or not. i imagine not, but i don’t know
If you read the articles you linked, you’ll notice some specifically fishy language. Neither one says that donors are promised first dibs, only that they often get it. If it’s not written down, you have nothing if they decide to do it differently.
i know. like i said, i don’t believe it
i was just trying to be funny : (