1) I think I can save more lives by being an organ donor.
There were about 6 thousand people last year in Canada who needed an organ transplant [1] and around 247 thousand deaths [2]. Of those deaths, about 1/3rd were prevented by existing donors. We’d be preventing less than 2% of all deaths in Canada if everyone got the donations they needed.
Donation is only viable in cases of brain death (~49% odds) [1], and I couldn’t find any statistics on how often a donor body is actually usable (but I’d assume vastly less than 100% of those cases, since you have to die of brain death in a hospital and still have cardiac activity) All in all, there’s a deficit of donors, so it’s probably still helpful (unless you’re a man who has had sex with another man, in which case you might not even be legally eligible; it’s banned in Canada).
I think you’re probably saving less than 1 life on average by being a donor. You’d probably do better to convince some friends and co-workers to sign up with, since organ donation is “low hanging fruit” (free, socially acceptable), and sign yourself up for cryonics (you can claim you’ve gone with the more complex “donate body to medical science” if you need a social excuse for why you’re not an organ donor yourself)
If you’re not doing cryonics, there’s no excuse for not being an organ donor, of course, so don’t use this as an excuse to wiggle out of doing one or the other! :)
Men who have had sex with another man. Thanks for calling me on it; I was mimicking the standard language I see there. Unfortunately the trans/queer-erasure remains, because the legal system tries desperately to pretend everyone fits in the nice binary boxes.
Oddly enough, here in France I see more and more mentions of transpeople, and fewer and fewer mentions of bisexual people, both in the mainstream and in LGBT media.
I’ve noticed the same, actually. However, the question of “can a trans-person legally donate blood/organs” is… well, not answered at all, to my knowledge, because they don’t fit the expected binary box of “are you a male who has had sex with another male?”
I think you’re probably saving less than 1 life on average by being a donor.
U.S. websites tend toward overblown claims (100 lives saved per donor...) that have made it nearly impossible for me to figure this out. It appears there are 15,000 donors per year here, and around 28,000 lives saved, implying it’s more than 1 life per donor (but not 5 or 10, as I had assumed).
I am currently signed up to be a donor, and I’m not really trying to wiggle out so much as figure out which option is better.
nods I tried looking at U.S. websites and found a pretty consistent “up to 8 lives saved” and anywhere from 40-100 that benefit from tissue donation. The big missing factor in my research was how often an organ donor actually ends up donating. Everything I read hinted at less than 50%, but I never found a firm figure.
There were about 6 thousand people last year in Canada who needed an organ transplant [1] and around 247 thousand deaths [2]. Of those deaths, about 1/3rd were prevented by existing donors. We’d be preventing less than 2% of all deaths in Canada if everyone got the donations they needed.
Donation is only viable in cases of brain death (~49% odds) [1], and I couldn’t find any statistics on how often a donor body is actually usable (but I’d assume vastly less than 100% of those cases, since you have to die of brain death in a hospital and still have cardiac activity) All in all, there’s a deficit of donors, so it’s probably still helpful (unless you’re a man who has had sex with another man, in which case you might not even be legally eligible; it’s banned in Canada).
I think you’re probably saving less than 1 life on average by being a donor. You’d probably do better to convince some friends and co-workers to sign up with, since organ donation is “low hanging fruit” (free, socially acceptable), and sign yourself up for cryonics (you can claim you’ve gone with the more complex “donate body to medical science” if you need a social excuse for why you’re not an organ donor yourself)
If you’re not doing cryonics, there’s no excuse for not being an organ donor, of course, so don’t use this as an excuse to wiggle out of doing one or the other! :)
[1] http://www.transplant.ca/pubinfo_orgtiss.htm [2] http://www40.statcan.gc.ca/l01/cst01/demo07a-eng.htm
Do you mean a man who has sex with men, or do they allow bisexual men? (The incidence of e.g. HIV might be different in these populations.)
(Full disclosure: I am so fucking tired of bisexual erasure I will use thread derailment and other acts of terrorism^W mildannoyanceism.)
Men who have had sex with another man. Thanks for calling me on it; I was mimicking the standard language I see there. Unfortunately the trans/queer-erasure remains, because the legal system tries desperately to pretend everyone fits in the nice binary boxes.
Oddly enough, here in France I see more and more mentions of transpeople, and fewer and fewer mentions of bisexual people, both in the mainstream and in LGBT media.
I’ve noticed the same, actually. However, the question of “can a trans-person legally donate blood/organs” is… well, not answered at all, to my knowledge, because they don’t fit the expected binary box of “are you a male who has had sex with another male?”
U.S. websites tend toward overblown claims (100 lives saved per donor...) that have made it nearly impossible for me to figure this out. It appears there are 15,000 donors per year here, and around 28,000 lives saved, implying it’s more than 1 life per donor (but not 5 or 10, as I had assumed).
I am currently signed up to be a donor, and I’m not really trying to wiggle out so much as figure out which option is better.
nods I tried looking at U.S. websites and found a pretty consistent “up to 8 lives saved” and anywhere from 40-100 that benefit from tissue donation. The big missing factor in my research was how often an organ donor actually ends up donating. Everything I read hinted at less than 50%, but I never found a firm figure.
Google needs a “-Propaganda” or “+Science” tag :)