Editorial: Love your neighbor; donate your organs

The most important notation on my driver’s license covers the bottom-right corner. It’s located just beside entries that say my eyes are blue and I’ll always be required to wear corrective lenses to drive in Texas. The most important notation is a little red heart with “donor” written in the middle.

The little red heart tells medical personnel a message vital to my heart: If I die, they should give my organs and tissues to people who need them.

Editor Marv KnoxApril is Organ Donation Month. Would you join me by registering to donate your organs? It’s one of the best things either of us can do.

A vital need

The need is vital—127,966 of our fellow Americans are on waiting lists to receive organ transplants, according to the Health & Human Services’ Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network. Those lists grow by one person every 11 minutes, or 130 people every day, the National Network of Organ Donors reports. Seventy-five people receive transplants each day, but 19 others die because organs are not available.

The need for organ transplants transcends the spectrum of our population. Transplant candidates include people of all ages, races and ethnicities, incomes, educational levels and faiths. No matter how different they may be, at one crucial level, they’re all the same: If they don’t receive a transplant, they will die.

A personal issue

If you’ve been a Baptist Standard reader very long, you probably know this is a personal issue. My sister, Martha, died four years ago this month. At birth, she suffered from a couple of severe physical challenges, including kidney/bladder problems. Our father donated a kidney to Martha when she was a relatively young woman, and that loving act extended her life more than 15 years.

At the time of her death, Martha and I were signed up for a shared-donor program. Although I wasn’t her match, I could donate a kidney to someone else, and another donor would donate a kidney to her. We both looked ahead with hope. Complications took her life before the transplant-swap occurred, and she went to heaven. Her health is perfect now, but I still miss her enormously.

Of course, every organ-transplant need is a personal story. The commodities are hearts, kidneys, lungs, intestines and other organs. But the realities are human beings. Each prospective recipient is someone’s sibling, child, parent, friend.

It makes a difference

Organ donation makes a life-over-death difference with staying power. Here are the percentages of transplant recipients who still are alive five years after receiving an organ—kidney, 69.3 percent; heart, 74.9 percent; liver, 73.8 percent; lung, 54.4 percent.

Please take two simple steps to declare your willingness to donate your organs:

• The next time you renew your driver’s license, indicate you agree to be an organ donor. The State of Texas will print a little red “donor” heart on your license, too.

• Register as a donor at the Donate Life Texas website. A national donor-registration program does not exist. If you live outside Texas, search for your state’s registration program on the Internet.

Organ donation is the ultimate fulfillment of Jesus’ mandate to care for “the least of these” expressed in Matthew 25. The registration process takes less than a minute; the results last multiple lifetimes.