Disingenuous Organ Procurement
WindyPundit Mark Draughn posts a significant clarification to Tom Simon's good-hearted post about changes in the Illinois rules for deceased organ donors (see below). I'm afraid the state's organ procurement organization is using Tom (and me) in a disingenuous campaign. Mark writes:
What changed in Illinois is that your consent to donate your organs on death no longer requires the permission of your next of kin. The procurement team can simply look you up in the registry and take your organs without needing to get explicit permission from your family. They expect to get more organs this way because they can't be stopped by family members who are too distraught to make a decision. (I imagine they can even take the organs over your family's vigorous objections, but my guess is they'll be reluctant to do that.) Both Meis's message and the Donate Life Illinois website explain all this. However, their explanations imply that your consent to donate is invalid until you register, and that's not true.
If you're like me and you signed up as a donor before 2006 then you didn't agree to this new way of doing things. You agreed to donate your organs only with the consent of your next of kin. That has not changed in any way. If you die without re-registering, that will still happen. The procurement team will simply approach your next of kin for permission.
As someone sympathetic to the cause of organ donation, I'm appalled yet fascinated by the ethical contortions the organ establishment goes through while preaching the evils of any compensation for donors. They want more organs, but they hate having to ask for them--whether that means dealing with living donors, getting consent from family members (as in Illinois), or getting consent at all (the "presumed consent" approach, which requires people before they die to take steps to clearly refuse donation). Aside from the ethical problems of overriding a bereaved family's wishes and essentially declaring bodies the property of the state, there's a practical problem: These steps may sound attractive in the short run, but they sow long-run distrust of the system.
On a more positive note, also from Illinois, check out this article and this excellent short slideshow.