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You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/20/shortage-donor-organs-superstition-squeamishness
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| Why are we short of donor organs? Superstition and squeamishness | Why are we short of donor organs? Superstition and squeamishness |
| (about 5 hours later) | |
| You needed your heart in the next world, the ancient Egyptians thought. It was the seat of intelligence and emotion, a vital part of the soul; without it Anubis, the god of the afterlife, would have nothing to weigh against a feather to judge a person’s goodness. They left it intact in a corpse, so that if you turned out to be wicked – and it was therefore devoured by a demon equal parts crocodile, leopard, and hippopotamus – you would only have yourself to blame. | You needed your heart in the next world, the ancient Egyptians thought. It was the seat of intelligence and emotion, a vital part of the soul; without it Anubis, the god of the afterlife, would have nothing to weigh against a feather to judge a person’s goodness. They left it intact in a corpse, so that if you turned out to be wicked – and it was therefore devoured by a demon equal parts crocodile, leopard, and hippopotamus – you would only have yourself to blame. |
| 429 people died last year while waiting for an organ transplant | 429 people died last year while waiting for an organ transplant |
| In 2015 we’re way past such fanciful conceptions of the body’s magic. Or so you’d hope. This morning’s news, however, that organ donations have fallen for the first time in 11 years, suggests otherwise. In a largely secular age, and one in which no major religion warns of the wrath of the croco-leop-opotamus, the donation consent rate is stuck below 60%. Last year, 429 people died while waiting for an organ transplant. The number of people on the waiting list for a heart has doubled in five years. Still, quite a lot of us choose to cling to our bits. Save a life through our own demise, spare another family the grief from which we are now powerless to protect our own? No thanks. We’d rather let the worms feast on us. We’d rather anthropomorphise our kidneys. | |
| Every time a bad news story about organ donation pops up, the same obvious point asserts itself: there can be few crises which remain so stubbornly impervious to logic or compassion. The reason that the problem persists is simple squeamishness – squeamishness about asking, squeamishness about consenting, squeamishness about the inevitability of our own death. It is the unexamined flipside of our misplaced piety about assisted suicide, and it gives rise to one of the more surreal and irrational equations of modern mortality: we refuse the dying dominion over their own bodies when the decision is still consequential, only to return them full authority when the matter is indisputably and irreversibly beyond their concern. | Every time a bad news story about organ donation pops up, the same obvious point asserts itself: there can be few crises which remain so stubbornly impervious to logic or compassion. The reason that the problem persists is simple squeamishness – squeamishness about asking, squeamishness about consenting, squeamishness about the inevitability of our own death. It is the unexamined flipside of our misplaced piety about assisted suicide, and it gives rise to one of the more surreal and irrational equations of modern mortality: we refuse the dying dominion over their own bodies when the decision is still consequential, only to return them full authority when the matter is indisputably and irreversibly beyond their concern. |
| Related: Organ donation rates held back by families refusing consent, study finds | Related: Organ donation rates held back by families refusing consent, study finds |
| In Wales, the NHS will soon move to a system of presumed consent. This solution presents no threat to the individual’s right to choose and it seems so blindingly obvious that it is impossible to understand why the same change has not been made everywhere. You never find a voice in an article on the subject making a reasoned case for retaining the status quo; we just don’t want to deal with it, would rather maintain the fantasy that the bereaved will find comfort in the integrity of a corpse, in their right to burn a decaying liver. | In Wales, the NHS will soon move to a system of presumed consent. This solution presents no threat to the individual’s right to choose and it seems so blindingly obvious that it is impossible to understand why the same change has not been made everywhere. You never find a voice in an article on the subject making a reasoned case for retaining the status quo; we just don’t want to deal with it, would rather maintain the fantasy that the bereaved will find comfort in the integrity of a corpse, in their right to burn a decaying liver. |
| The ancient Egyptians, by the way, might have set some store by the heart, but they were refreshingly unsentimental about the rest of our organs. Even if they thought you needed them in the next life, they removed them and put them in jars. They knew that the soul did not reside in the digestive system. They lived 3,000 years ago. When are we going to catch up? | The ancient Egyptians, by the way, might have set some store by the heart, but they were refreshingly unsentimental about the rest of our organs. Even if they thought you needed them in the next life, they removed them and put them in jars. They knew that the soul did not reside in the digestive system. They lived 3,000 years ago. When are we going to catch up? |
| • Sign up to organ donation | • Sign up to organ donation |