I think it's brilliant. But I work in health care, and worked 8 years in an emergency department before moving to design. I can see how it might make some sqeamish.

Bottom line, people die each year needlessly because there aren't enough organs to go around. Awareness campaigns have to become more aggressive, to increase the number of available organs.

(BTW, has everyone signed their organ donation cards? If not please consider it. TYVM.)

My daughter showed me this one. My first reaction? "This is the kind of solution that I always think of --- first."

Translation: I think its brilliant too.

heh, interesting. Whether it's an effective strategy or not, check out this recently posted TED talk (around the 5 min mark):

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_ariely_...decisions.html

Turns out you can get people to donate organs by just exploiting their tendency to not read forms.

I love TED. Great talk. I've known for a long time that people generally choose the default.

Brilliant! I love it! I am already signed up to be an organ donor and think everyone else should, too. Whatever isn't recycled of me, I want buried under a plum tree.

I love it as well. I have signed my organ donor/recycle me card a long time ago!

I think it's very well done

Since this subject has been brought up ... I have been considering signing up for organ donation. But one thing I that has happened recently turned me off a bit.

I have a friend down in PA and his co-workers wife died unexpectedly - she was 38. Of course they wanted her organs and he agreed ... now bear in mind this is a horrid time for the spouse/family when something like this happens but yet they are still asked this very delicate question. He agreed to let her organs go. That was a month ago.

The hospital just sent him a bill for over $2000 dollars for the procedure to harvest her organs.

I'm sorry but that just seems so wrong to me.

Kittie, I'm pretty sure that's a billing error. It's been a long time since I worked in a patient accounts office, but IIRC the harvesting is paid for by the recipient. Or it could have been hospital charges unrelated to the transplant, but weren't explained well enough.

Hmm... I suppose that could be .. but from what he told my friend it was marked as an Operating Room Procedure and she was never in the Operating room except to have her organs removed.

She died at home and was taken to the hospital morgue .. even bypassed the ER.

But, who knows .. it could just be a mix up ... I hope it is. He is looking in to it. So hopefully that is the case.

Actually, that's a bone of contention for a friend of mine, who recently donated one of his kidneys to his brother, as a living donor. A lot of the medical expenses that fall out of being a living donor aren't covered by the recipient's insurance, and so are the responsibility of the donor, not the recipient. Things like tests leading up to determining compatibility, pre- and post-op care after the transplant, disability, physicals, lodging (in case the donor has to travel to donate the organ, as happened in the case of my friend), time off from work, etc.

My friend has now become very active in a movement that will encourage better protections for living donors who can and want to donate an organ to a family member, and make it so that living donors aren't effectively penalized for something that, in my opinion, is a hugely generous and charitable act. The same should hold true for non-living organ donors, so hopefully garricks is right Kat, and this is a simple clerical error. Then again, given the state of our healthcare system in the U.S., I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't a mistake.

I'm a blood donor and I've signed away my organs at death.

I don't find the website offensive, repulsive or anything. I think it's a brilliant site, well constructed and thought out.

The thing about donating blood is that it only has a shelf life of about 2/3 months. So donating regularly is important.

I have a shelf-life of one-life and so does everyone. If my death can continue several lives then it makes me happy.

I think the site reflects the point above - in a way.

My Dad was 58 when he had a tripple bypass. It was the scariest moment in my life and probably his. I nearly lost him. But 11 years on he's still going strong. I can't keep him out of building things, or going to his workshop in the shed. He's always doing it. Doing something strenous. It worries me.

But he's pushing on 70 now and doen't look a day over 50. Honestly. He's the greatest man in the world. If he didn't have the tripple bypass I'd beg him to donate his heart. But that won't happen. It can't.

When I asked him at 60 where he wanted to be buried he told me that I can do what I like with his body, he's just an empty shell. (Edit - me and my dad talk about everything, and this came up a weird way and not just sitting around chatting - just so you know it's not what we normally talk about)

That's how I feel about it. When I die, I'm an empty shell. If parts of me can be saved to save someone else then so be it. I have no ownership to my bodyparts once I'm dead. They belong to whoever needs them.

That's it really.

Are you serious?? That is SO wrong on so many levels. And if that man who donated his wife's organs is actually being charged for their removal, then that is just... just... so far beyond despicable that it leaves me speechless.

Digi

Digi, that's why my friend is involved in getting better protections in place for other living donors. He feels that a lot more people would do what he did, they just can't necessarily afford to, whereas he and his brother were in a position to be able to deal with the other expenses.