Organ donation

Organ donation is the removal of specific tissues of the human body from a person who has recently died, or from a living donor, for the purpose of transplanting them into other persons.

Political issues

There are also extremely controversial issues regarding how organs

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are allocated between patients. For example, some believe that livers should not be given to alcoholics in danger of reversion, while some view alcoholism as a medical condition like diabetes.

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Healthy humans have two kidneys, a redundancy that enables living donors (inter vivos) to give a kidney to someone who needs it. The most common transplants are to close relatives, but people have given kidneys to other friends; in one case, a teacher gave a kidney to one of her students.

Related Topics:
Kidney - Inter vivos

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The Spanish transplant system is one of the most successful in the world, but still can't meet the demand. Donations from corpses are anonymous, and a network for communication and transport allows fast extraction and transplant across the country. Under Spanish law, every corpse can provide organs unless the deceased person expressly rejected it. Nonetheless, doctors ask the family for permission (making it very similar in practice to the United States system). The enforcing of helmet wearing for bikers, though, has reduced the number of young healthy donors.

Related Topics:
Spanish transplant system - Helmet

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Under United States law, the regulation of organ donations is left to the fifty U.S. states. A Uniform Anatomical Gift Act seeks to streamline the process and standardize the rules among the various states, but it still requires that the donor make an affirmative statement during his lifetime that he is willing to be an organ donor. Many states have sought to encourage the donations to be made by allowing the consent to be noted on the driver's license. Still, it remains an opt-in system rather than the Spanish style opt-out system (which still seeks family consent, however).

Related Topics:
United States - U.S. state - Uniform Anatomical Gift Act - Driver's license

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