Isabella Taylor
Recently, I’ve become interested in a couple of conspiracies surrounding people who have “organ donor” on their ID. I don’t know how much you’ve been on Instagram Reels, but there’s always some sort of reel where someone removes, or doesn’t put “organ donor” on their license, because of the fear that doctors will treat them differently.
To understand what I’m talking about, here’s a great definition of what the UDDA (The Uniform Determination of Death Act, passed in 1981) declared as “brain dead.” This declaration is what legally separates you from giving your organs to those in need or not. Kathrrine Pitcher sums it up really well in her article “I removed myself from the organ donor registry… here’s why.”
“A person with zero brain function as defined by the UDDA cannot take a single breath on her own, and her heart can only beat from 48 hours up to 1 week with the help of a ventilator. She cannot regulate her own body temperature, and her kidneys and digestive organs will stop working after about a week.”
This condition, which seems like a no-brainer (pun intended) to give away your organs, is not the issue. Katherine later notes that multiple cases have been documented that show previously “brain-dead” patients living for almost a year or more. This could be an extremely small statistic, and the information online is difficult to decipher. I wasn’t able to pin down a percentage of those pronounced “brain dead” who then recovered.
On the other hand, the Mayo Clinic urges most to become an organ donor, and provides a couple of refuting points against some common myths, including the information from Katherine regarding the doctor’s rushing your organs prematurely. If you’re interested in this information, I would read their article about organ donation.
If you’re worried about these factors when deciding whether to place that red heart on your driver’s license, I would urge you to consider doing some research on your own or just designate someone to make the decision for you (after going through your opinion at length). You can then remove the red heart without the worry that your organs won’t go to help those in need if you are truly unsaveable.