Every ten minutes another patient joins thousands of Americans already waiting on organ transplant lists. Each day, 77 organ transplants happen, but at the same time 22 people die from organ failure due to the scarcity of available organs (“The Need is Real: Data”). As of this past January, 121,678 people were awaiting organ transplants. Unfortunately, in the United States today, thousands of people who need organ transplants spend an average of 3.6 years waiting on the transplant lists (“Organ Donation and Transplantation Statistics”). The current, voluntary consent system of organ donation in the United States drastically fails to provide for patients on the waiting lists. I am here to explain why the United States should adopt a new presumed
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In America today, when teenagers receive their driver's licenses, they are given the option to check a box and become organ donors. The key point here lies in the fact each citizen must give his or her consent to become an organ and tissue donor. Now that we know exactly how the current system works, I will describe the extent of the problems resulting from this system. According to a 2005 poll in the American Psychological Association’s journal Health Psychology, 95% of Americans support organ donation, but only 40% of eligible Americans are actually registered as organ donors (Wood, Janice). In 2014, 4,761 patients died waiting for a kidney transplant, and 3,668 people became ineligible for transplants because they became too sick (“Organ Donation and Transplantation Statistics”). Based off of data collected by Donate Life America, 24% of patients on the organ transplant list received donated organs in 2015 (“Statistics”). According to Dr. Mary Ganikos, chief of education at the U.S Department of Transplantation, “We have the medical technology and pharmaceutical expertise in place to make transplantation doable, but we don't have enough of the human element we need to save more lives” (Novotney, Amy). We have already seen the severe lack of organ donors and large number of patients waiting for donated organs, so now we will explore a solution to these
In America today, when teenagers receive their driver's licenses, they are given the option to check a box and become organ donors. The key point here lies in the fact each citizen must give his or her consent to become an organ and tissue donor. Now that we know exactly how the current system works, I will describe the extent of the problems resulting from this system. According to a 2005 poll in the American Psychological Association’s journal Health Psychology, 95% of Americans support organ donation, but only 40% of eligible Americans are actually registered as organ donors (Wood, Janice). In 2014, 4,761 patients died waiting for a kidney transplant, and 3,668 people became ineligible for transplants because they became too sick (“Organ Donation and Transplantation Statistics”). Based off of data collected by Donate Life America, 24% of patients on the organ transplant list received donated organs in 2015 (“Statistics”). According to Dr. Mary Ganikos, chief of education at the U.S Department of Transplantation, “We have the medical technology and pharmaceutical expertise in place to make transplantation doable, but we don't have enough of the human element we need to save more lives” (Novotney, Amy). We have already seen the severe lack of organ donors and large number of patients waiting for donated organs, so now we will explore a solution to these