Clarifying organ donor process will save lives

Editorial

October 25, 2005

Michigan House Bill 4938 was signed into law last Wednesday, and by that evening four young lives already had benefited from the legislative action.

With the governor's signature, the bill became Public Act 176, helping to link county medical examiner's offices with organ procurement organizations to ensure that organs available for transplantation are handled in a timely way.

Under the new law, if a county medical examiner or designee learns of a death that will require an investigation, the examiner/designee takes charge of the body and determines whether the body or its organs are suitable for donation. If there is a possibility of transplant, the examiner/designee must contact the federally designated organ procurement organization, which in Michigan is the Gift of Life. Arrangements then are made for the proper handling of any donatable organs, eyes and tissues in addition to meeting the needs of the medical examiner.

We hope that Public Act 176 cuts through the bureaucracy and regulations governing medical care and organ transplantation to make sure that no available transplant organs go unused.

The legislation, sponsored by Rep. Joe Hune, R-Hamburg Township, will further facilitate the matching of people in need of transplants with available organs. Gift of Life Michigan estimates that more than 2,800 people in Michigan need an organ transplant, and about 150 people in the state died last year waiting for a suitable donor.

Gift of Life Michigan also found 92 cases between 1999 and 20004 where bodies or organs suitable for donation were not released by medical examiners in time for successful transplants. This is unfair both to the person in need of a transplant, as well as to person who before death specified that they wanted their organs donated if they could help someone else.

PA 176 seeks to make sure that doesn't happen. There already is evidence that it is helping. Last Wednesday, state Rep. John Gleason's office received a call saying that a child on Gift of Life's organ donation list had passed away, making organs available to four infants. Hune and Gleason contacted Gov. Jennifer Granholm's office, the bill was expedited and the governor signed it that day. By that evening, while one family grieved, four families were celebrating their children's successful transplant surgeries.

Copyright © 2005 Battle Creek Enquirer.

This article posted November 7, 2005.