From: bu008@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Brandon D. Ray)
Newsgroups: alt.society.civil-liberty,talk.politics.guns
Subject: Re: interesting [and scary] blurb...
Date: 26 Dec 1992 02:35:56 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio (USA)
Reply-To: bu008@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Brandon D. Ray)
NNTP-Posting-Host: hela.ins.cwru.edu


In a previous article, jbn@photon.com (Joe Naiman) says:

>Theoretically, the non-donor card punishes those who didn't pass or support
>the helmet law.  However, the cost of hospitalization for organ non-
>recipients wasn't deducted from any gross medical savings used to justify
>a helmet law.
>
>Because the decline in available organs due to a helmet law decreases the
>chance of survival for an organ non-recipient, anyone with a loved one who
>needs an organ has standing to request an injunction immediately ceasing
>enforcement of the helmet law.  Failure to do so does not put them in the
>same category with active helmet law proponents, but failure to take this
>opportunity justifies the motorcyclists' non-donor efforts.
>
>Joe Naiman
>
> 
>
Unfortunately, this reasoning does not follow, since if you die in a highway
accident in Kentucky (to pick a random example) there is no certainty that
organs you donate will be used in Kentucky...they might just as well be
used in Tennesee, or in any other state.  There is a complicated algorithm
which determines which patient receives a given organ, and it is almost
never known at the time of the harvest who will receive the organ.  Each
patient needing an organ is has personal and medical information fed into
a national database.  Whenever an organ becomes available, information 
concerning the donor is also fed in.  The database then matches the donor's
information against the list of people on the waiting list.  While it is
true that one of the factors the computer considers is the geographical
 proximity of the donor to the patient, and while it is also true that
the computer first checks for patients witin the same geographical region,
this is far from being the only criterion, and it is not at all uncommon
for an organ to be given to a patient in another state...even to one halfway
across the continent.

And, before you ask, it is against the law for that organ, once assigned by
the database, to go to any patient other than the one assigned...nor is it
legal to bypass the database.  The only exception would be if the designated
recipient should die or for some other reason not be a candidate for surgery
at the time the organ is harvested.  And I suppose if it could be shown
that the organ would not have been usable if the surgeons took the time
to go through the usual process then an exception would be allowed, but those
cases must be rare.
 
And here is the clincher (this also kills the idea of trying to collect
damages if your organ goes to someone in a state with a helmet law):  you
cannot find out the identity of the recipient.  You (or your estate) will
never know whether your heart (for example) went to someone living in 
Kentucky and Tennesse, because the recipient's identity is protected
under federal law.  (So is the donor's identity, by the way.)  The only
way you would ever find out would be if both the recipient and the donor's
estate waived confidentiality..and somehow I doubt that someone would
waive their privacy rights so that you can find out who they are in order
to file a lawsuit.


-- 
******************************************************************************
The opinions expressed by the author are insightful, intelligent and very
carefully thought out.  It is therefore unlikely that they are shared by the
University of Iowa or Case Western Reserve University.
Newsgroups: alt.society.civil-liberty,talk.politics.guns