Giving Yourself

Though both Tennessee and Alabama as part of the driver's application process encourage organ donation by asking people if they want to be donors, some people say they are afraid to become organ donors for fear that doctors would let them die to get their organs.

Several circumstances help prevent that: hospitals do not want their mortality rates any higher than they have to be, hospitals receive no money for organs, and doctors who certify death - which takes place before donations - are not members of the transplant team.

And an extra precaution in the system, says Hank Black, a representative of the transplant program at the University of Alabama in Birmingham, is that doctors will not use your organs without permission of your survivors.

Nationally, more than 68,000 people are waiting for a vascular or organ transplant. About nine people on that list die each day without a transplant, according to a fact sheet by the Alabama Organ Center.

For more information about organ donations or to register as a donor, call Chuck Patrick, director of the Alabama Organ Center, (800) 252-3677.

Web sites with information include:

• www.uab.edu/aoc/facts.htm
• http://www.giftoflifefoundation.org/
• http://www.livingbank.org/.
  Phone number for The Living Bank is (800) 528-2971.
• Get additional information on polycystic kidney disease from the Polycystic Kidney Research Foundation at or at (800) 753-2873.

Copyright © 2000 Alabama Live, LLC.

This article posted July 22, 2000.