Organ Donation

Facebook is the biggest online social medium in the world. People love it, are uneasy with it, even a little suspicious. It just may have done something inarguably good, with immediate, measurable impact. So far, that seems to be the case with Facebook's new organ-donation push. On Tuesday, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, announced that users can now choose to indicate to their Facebook world that they wish to be organ donors. And, if you choose, a link can whisk you right to your state's donor registry, where you can register online.

RICK SELVIN, the ex-Daily News staffer who died recently, was very lucky to get a heart transplant and 10 more years of life. More than half of the 98,000 Americans on the national waiting list will die before they get a transplant, most needlessly. Americans bury or cremate about 20,000 transplantable organs every year. More than 6,000 of their neighbors die every year as a result. There is a simple way to put a big dent in the organ shortage - give organs first to people who have agreed to donate their organs when they die. Giving organs first to organ donors will persuade more people to register as organ donors.

Robert J. Rehrmann is such a believer in organ donation that he ran a full-page ad in Tuesday's Inquirer urging people to follow his example and register as a donor. "Think of the incredible relief of human suffering you will have helped bring about," the 84-year-old retired aeronautical engineer wrote in the $3,700 advertisement, published in Pennsylvania editions. Alas, his altruistic promotion contained some misinformation about how to register. And it turns out that he actually signed up to give his body for medical education, not organ donation.

This is National Organ and Tissue Donor Awareness Week. It's easy, though, to get through the week and still avoid thinking about whether you'd want your family to donate your organs to someone else after you're dead. The issue is distasteful. Any scenario in which you get to donate organs involves either your being dead or someone you love being dead. But every day, people bury livers, kidneys, hearts and lungs in the ground, where they'll rot and decay, instead of giving the gift of life to others like themselves and their loved ones - mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, husbands, wives, children, grandparents - all longing to return to rich, active lives.

Last month, the American Medical Association entertained changes to the way we understand organ donation. Whereas organ donation has always been viewed as a gift, the AMA suggested that we investigate offering financial incentives to encourage organ donation. The proposal was inspired in part by a questionable statistic: that only about a third of all eligible donors agree to donate their organs. In fact, donation rates are most reliably assessed at a regional level, and in some regions considerable majorities consent to donation.

On her dead son's birthday and at Christmastime, Judy Carr inquires about his organs, to see how they are doing in their new lives. When she learned a few weeks ago that one of his kidneys had failed, she grieved anew for her Tim, lost in a car wreck at age 18. Yet Carr, of Mary Esther, Fla., has found in organ donation a source of redemptive power. And so it has been for Pat Bell of Tampa. She believes her Jonathan has continued to help people since a gunshot claimed him. "His heart valves, his strong, young, healthy, 17-year-old male bones.

A week ago, Barbara March climbed into a crib at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and curled against her 2-year-old son, Matthew, for one last hug. For 45 days, Matthew had been waiting for a double-lung transplant. The lungs did not come in time and he had slipped into a coma. Instead, he would become a donor. After that final hug, Barbara March, a 32-year-old Coatesville teacher, and her husband, Benjamin, a 44-year-old businessman, let a surgeon take Matthew's kidneys for another deathly ill child.

I thought I was dreaming. When I renewed my driver's license recently, I walked into an empty photo center and strolled right up to a smiling clerk. There was no waiting in line, no sitting patiently listening for my name to be called. In fact, I didn't even have time to take off my jacket as I handed over my old license and was asked to answer some routine questions that popped up on a computer screen next to me. I answered the first few in a daze, still a little stunned by the prompt, courteous service.

Many newly bereaved families face the issue of organ donation full of questions and doubts - but with little time to resolve them. As the need increases for hearts, lungs, livers and kidneys, the challenge is how to boost participation in organ donation and get people talking about the choice before a tragedy occurs. Nationwide, only about 14,000 people who die each year are suitable candidates for donation. Last year, only 5,700 out of those 14,000 were donors. In Pennsylvania last year, only 394 donors provided lungs, kidneys, hearts - while 800 people on the 4,500-person waiting list died awaiting transplants.

When the Rev. Dayle Malloy discovered that it would be possible for her to donate a kidney to her husband, Dick, the decision took no time at all. "It seemed like the most natural thing in the world to me," she said. But because donating an organ is not so natural for others, Pastor Malloy, 53, an associate at Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church in Lansdale, also will donate her experience to try to persuade them. "It is such a blessing and gift that we can give," she said of the opportunity to educate her 5,700-member congregation.

Following a concerted effort by New Jersey's Motor Vehicle Commission to ask every customer about organ donation, the number of registered donors in the state shot up last year. The number of people who registered as donors at MVC offices rose from 626,857 in 2011 to 713,702 in 2012, up 14 percent. In total, the number of registered donors in New Jersey went up by 4.5 percent during that time period to 2.4 million. The numbers were highlighted Thursday at a news conference at Our Lady of Lourdes Medical Center in Camden, which performs organ transplants.

Facebook is the biggest online social medium in the world. People love it, are uneasy with it, even a little suspicious. It just may have done something inarguably good, with immediate, measurable impact. So far, that seems to be the case with Facebook's new organ-donation push. On Tuesday, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, announced that users can now choose to indicate to their Facebook world that they wish to be organ donors. And, if you choose, a link can whisk you right to your state's donor registry, where you can register online.

In our region, 6,500 critically ill residents wait for organs, kidneys, livers, hearts. After a notable 8.6 percent decline last year, local organ donations have increased - March was a banner month - but not enough if you ask anyone who has been waiting and waiting, an average of five years for a healthy kidney. In 1994, Pennsylvania became one of the first states to list organ donation on driver's licenses. The region is a mecca with eight surgical centers performing transplants.

Through the 1990s and into the 2000s, as public awareness about the need for organ transplants grew, the number of people who became donors - living and deceased - increased by several hundred each year. In the last four years, however, that number has leveled off. Last year, total donors were down slightly nationwide. Locally, there was a bigger drop. Pennsylvania saw a 6.6 percent decline in the number of people who were organ donors last year, while New Jersey's number fell 7.9 percent, according to data collected by the United Network for Organ Sharing, a federal contractor that manages the U.S. transplant system.

Robert J. Rehrmann is such a believer in organ donation that he ran a full-page ad in Tuesday's Inquirer urging people to follow his example and register as a donor. "Think of the incredible relief of human suffering you will have helped bring about," the 84-year-old retired aeronautical engineer wrote in the $3,700 advertisement, published in Pennsylvania editions. Alas, his altruistic promotion contained some misinformation about how to register. And it turns out that he actually signed up to give his body for medical education, not organ donation.

William V. Keys, 82, of Cherry Hill, a former Philadelphia Electric Co. supervisor who underwent a heart transplant in 1990 and became a major advocate for organ donations, died Wednesday, May 26, at home. After working nearly 30 years in the transportation division of Philadelphia Electric, now Peco Energy Co., Mr. Keys suffered a massive heart attack that forced him to retire earlier than expected. His gall bladder was removed in 1989 and he was also hospitalized at that time with congestive heart failure.

Hey, buddy, can you spare a kidney? What if you got $10,000 for your trouble? $100,000? Or more? With 106,131 Americans now on waiting lists for an organ - 83,754 of them for kidneys - researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and the Philadelphia VA Medical Center sought to find out whether financial incentives would increase living organ donation. Their findings - that payments would draw more participants without relying disproportionately on poor people - are highly controversial.

Howard Nathan set out to be a doctor. Rejected from medical school, he hoped that networking with some prominent local transplant surgeons might give him another shot at admission. Instead, Nathan, who runs Philadelphia's Gift of Life Donor Program, wound up a world traveler and a prominent leader in the world of organ transplantation. Now in his 31st year at the organ program, he is president of the International Society of Organ Donation and Procurement. In 1978, Nathan became the third employee of what was then the Delaware Valley Transplant Program.

In New Jersey, summer doesn't just bring the dog days. In June, July and August there's also Delaware Bay Day, National Airborne Day and Toms River East Little League World Champions Day (Aug. 29, if you're planning ahead). Those are just some of the 80-plus honorary days, months and weeks New Jersey lawmakers have put on the books to raise awareness, commemorate acts and honor causes, including the patriotic (Liberty Day), the obscure (Credit Union Day) and the redundant (New Jersey Day)

RICK SELVIN, the ex-Daily News staffer who died recently, was very lucky to get a heart transplant and 10 more years of life. More than half of the 98,000 Americans on the national waiting list will die before they get a transplant, most needlessly. Americans bury or cremate about 20,000 transplantable organs every year. More than 6,000 of their neighbors die every year as a result. There is a simple way to put a big dent in the organ shortage - give organs first to people who have agreed to donate their organs when they die. Giving organs first to organ donors will persuade more people to register as organ donors.