Organ Donation

Msgr. Charles B. Mynaugh, 88, of Darby, former communications director for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, died of Parkinson's disease Sept. 30 at Villa St. Joseph in Darby. In early October 1979, when Pope John Paul II became the first active pontiff to visit Philadelphia, Msgr. Mynaugh's job was to be at the right hand of Cardinal John Krol. Msgr. Mynaugh helped organize logistics, greeted visiting bishops from around the world, and handled press credentials for more than 1,500 journalists who came to the city to the cover the event.

The organization that manages organ donations in the region may offer surgeons the option of removing organs in surgical suites at its new headquarters building rather than the hospitals where the donors die. The move would be a significant change for donor families because their loved ones would be transported from the hospital on life support to Gift of Life Donor Program's office, at Third and Callowhill Streets. Only one other city in the country - St. Louis - has tried this approach.

When Lynn Rogers needed a kidney transplant, she called her large family together. She would have the best chance of survival with a living donor transplant, she told them. Would anybody help? Her daughter and all seven brothers and sisters volunteered. Her younger sister, Jackie Shirley, the one who looks just like her, was a perfect match. There was little question she'd do it. She had lost her mother and a stepson in the last year, and she wasn't about to lose her sister, too. In August, Jackie gave Lynn one of her kidneys at Albert Einstein Medical Center just four months after Lynn went on dialysis.

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.

Officials at Mercy Suburban Hospital said the accused double murderer who hanged himself in a Montgomery County prison is brain dead. However, Chang Qi - charged with fatally stabbing the wife and 8-year old son of a former employer on May 9 - remains on life support. "He is brain dead. He's in grave condition," said Sonya Evans-Johnson, spokeswoman for the East Norriton hospital. She declined comment on whether he was being kept on life support for purposes of organ donation. Prison guards found Qi hanging from a shower rod in his cell in the prison's medical wing at about 1 a.m. on Wednesday.

After a nearly eight-year delay, Pennsylvania has started a controversial program that provides financial rewards to those who donate organs. The state is offering a $300 benefit to pay for food and lodging costs incurred by a donor or a donor's family. The program, the first of its kind in the nation, is paid for through donations to the state's Organ Donation Awareness Trust Fund. "This provides real help to real people going through a challenging time right now," said Stephen H. Suroviec, the deputy secretary of the state Health Department.

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.

Protection for fetuses? Congress's concern for life would be funny if it weren't so hypocritical. These protectors of the "unborn," these champions of life, voted against national health care for children, Head Start and school lunch programs. Save those fetuses, but once they're born, let them starve! These are the same people who voted to cut back welfare benefits to women with children (although corporate welfare is fine) but have nothing to say about making deadbeat dads pay for the children they helped create.

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson has launched a nationwide effort to increase the supply of human organs available for transplantation. Although the number of organs donated last year was nearly 23,000 - up 5.3 percent over 1999 - the number of people on the national waiting list has been growing even faster. It was about 76,000 in 2000, up more than 10 percent over the previous year. The HHS plan calls on companies, unions and other organizations to stimulate donations of organs from their members.

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.