Organ Transplantation and Donations

Organ transplantation and donations.

An organ donation is the transplantation of an organ or biological tissue of a human body. Where organs are removed from a donor and transplanted into someone who is very ill or dying from organ failure.

4 Organs are systems of cells and tissues that perform a specific task in the human body. While organs deteriorate over a lifetime along with the rest of the body, diseases or genetics may ultimately destroy one specific organ while the rest of the body remains relatively healthy. Depending on which organ is wearing down, there are many life-sustaining measures of transplantation that can be taken to improve human’s health, quality of life and longevity.

3 Nonetheless, there are more organs needed than there are available to be transplanted. Though, many lives are saved through organ donation. Becoming a donor is an incredible and noble gift of life that can give someone a second chance in life. There are many living examples of organ recipients fully functioning in society with the exception of having to take daily antirejection medication. Organ donation saves and improves the quality of life of many people every year. As more people become aware and potential donors, more terminally ill patient in-need of an organ transplantation have greater opportunity of survival.

If more people donated more organs or tissue, more live could be impacted.

Most religious and spiritual groups either strongly endorse the act of donating organs or believe it is donor’s decision to donate. For instance, the Christian faith is based upon the revelation of God in the life of Jesus Christ. Jesus taught people to love one another and embrace the needs of others. Therefore, Christians consider organ donation as an act of love and a way of following Jesus’ example. Christians believe in eternal life, and preparing for death should not be feared. However, there are few religious groups namely gypsies and Shinto are opposed to organ donation. Gypsies do not have a formalized religion but they do have a shared belief system, in which the body is still needed in the first year of the afterlife as the soul retraces its steps. Jehova witnesses require a special mention as they are directed to make individual choices on the assumption that no blood transition is involved.

During the 18th century, there were many failures over the years, but by the mid-19th century, scientists were performing successful organ transplants and saved millions of lives. Early in the 1900s, European doctors attempted to save patients dying of renal failure by transplanting kidneys from various animals, including monkeys, pigs and goats. However, none of the recipients lived for more than a few days. Doctors then found that skin from a different donor usually caused the procedure to fail, observing the immune system response that his successors would come to recognize as transplant rejection. In the early 1950s, with the development of science technology and medical research, kidney was the first human organ to be transplanted successfully by a team of doctors at Boston’s Peter Bent Brigham Hospital. Liver, heart and pancreas transplants were successfully performed by the late 1960s, while lung and intestinal organ transplant procedures were begun in the 1980s. As transplants became less risky and more prevalent, the law established a registry for organ matching and placement while outlawing the sale of human organs. More than 100,000 patients are currently on the national waiting list.