Where Are The Donors? -- Courant.com

Where Are The Donors? -- Courant.com


Where Are The Donors?
January 23, 2008
It took equal measures of courage and love for Corey Gray to do what he did. Mr. Gray, 29, donated half of his liver to his uncle Daniel Gray, 59, whose own liver was failing due to a large tumor. The operation, performed a week ago at Yale-New Haven Hospital by a team led by Dr. Sukru Emre, was the state's first liver transplant from a living donor.

As The Courant's Hilary Waldman reported, the operation can be very risky for the donor; two have died in the past decade. Corey Gray's acceptance of the risk to save his uncle's life is a gesture of heroic proportion.

Yet a question we must ask is why he had to do it.




Doctors began a limited use of transplants from living donors because there are not enough livers from deceased people. According to the government website OrganDonor.gov, the national waiting list as of Jan. 11 for an organ transplant was 97,938. About 7,000 people, including almost 2,000 on the liver transplant list, die every year while waiting for a lifesaving organ. The wait for a kidney, depending on blood type, is up to four years. More than half of those on the list will die before receiving a transplant. Meanwhile, countless usable organs are buried or cremated every day.

Why? Why don't more people offer their organs and tissues for transplant?

We can say with reasonable certainty that they won't be needed on the other side of the River Styx. Donation doesn't cost anything. It doesn't negate an open casket viewing. Hospitals do not hasten the deaths of donors. All mainline religions endorse the practice. In short, there is no reason not to give these gifts of life.

It can be done by going to a Department of Motor Vehicles office when getting or renewing your driver's license, or by going to the department's website, www.ct.gov/dmv. Scroll down, click on the pink heart and follow the instructions. Get that little heart on your license.

We also like the idea, from a nonprofit called LifeSharers (lifesharers.org), of putting registered organ donors at the top of the transplant list. In other words, if a registered donor finds herself in need of a transplant, she goes to the top of the waiting list. Fair is fair.

As inspiring as Corey Gray's act was, our world would be better if he hadn't had to do it.