Today a massive campaign has started to create awareness of the importance of donating organs after death. One of the events organized was to have public figures trying to recruit organ donors, which was broadcasted on nu.nl (the biggest dutch news site); the same office building I work at.
All the celebrities passing by didn’t mean much to me. What caught my eye was the effort everyone was taking to make people aware of a problem and trying to convince them to become organ donors.
truthfully I’ve always avoided the topic of being organ donor. I guess I suffer from an overactive imagination as I visualize them tearing the organs out of my lifeless body.
This old Monty Python sketch didn’t help either.
The problem is marketing. It starts nice with the question:
“Would you like to save someone’s life”
That question would be answered by most with “Why yes, of course”. And why wouldn’t they? It’s a noble thing to do.
But then things get hairy. There’s a form:
“Yes, I give permission” (to donate organs).
Nice and abstract concept, not too visual. Something I can live with. There’s more…
“With the exception of the following”
Oh, I get to choose? How nice…
“Pancreas, intestines, cornea, lungs, arteries, heart, skin, kidneys, bone tissue, tendons, heart valves, liver”
…
Fail!
I was fine with donating but this “shopping list” really turns me off. I know that it’s good people have a choice but let them write it down themselves. Don’t make it sound like an episode of the body snatchers trying to harvest your inerts. I can already visualize a insensitive lab assistant indiscriminately making up inventory of what goodies she can harvest out of my corpse.
Why do I write about this? because being a donor is important. People can be saved by donating organs. If you reverse that statement, people die because there’s a shortage. And we are not talking about people who ruined their livers with alcohol or their lungs with smoking. We are talking about people who had no choice.
I’ve signed up today. Will you?
Good for you Greffy, welcome to the club of people that have made it an official thing, that they want people to stick fingers inside their head to make the colors taste like soft wonder.