Tim Richards passes away

i don't mean to sound callous, but i'm guessing, since he died on the operating table from the sounds of things, that his organs would've been harvested for others, so from tragedy something good is born.

i honestly don't understand the logic behind not being a donor.
maybe it's just the way i was raised, both my parents were donors (Mum no longer is, due to medical reasons exempting her from eligibility), and i'd rather see someone benefit from my death too, if possible. as soon as i turned 16, i signed onto the register, and resigned when the donor card was introduced.

and don't forget that signing up isn't the be all, end all. make sure those around you know you want to be a donor, since surviving family can veto your plans once you can no longer state your intentions.

well, a will reading, or other legal document would be far too late for the donor to be of benefit to anyone - but no, even if my dad were to die today, and he has a donor card in his wallet, it would be possible for me to stand in his room and decline to provide consent to the harvest - or even changing the conditions (such as what gets harvested).

organ donorship isn't really as simple as:
1) You Die.
2) You're harvested.
3) People benefit.

the circumstances surrounding your death plays a huge part. typically harvesting has to happen within hours of your death, if not sooner, and the "best" scenario for a donor to die is actually brain-death, so your body actually keeps everything "fresh" until the doctors "kill" you and remove the required organs.
typically, even a Dead on Impact crash victim is usually too far gone for harvesting to be viable (assuming the body isn't too broken anyway.)
i do actually wonder if Tim Richards would've been eligible to donate, despite dying in the "best" possible location for donations to be viable, simply because as a recipient, he would've been on any number of drugs ahead of the procedure, as well as treating the health issue that lead to him being on the list in the first place.

as for the medic alert bracelet idea, if you sign up, you should get a card to stick in your wallet/purse.
see here. (and yes, in spite of me carrying one of these, my next of kin could override my choice.

so yeah, despite the numbers being "10 people will live if you die", the sheer enormity of the challenge to even be a viable donor post-mortem, means that you can never have too many registered donors.

i really don't understand why we didn't adopt an "Opt-Out" system, like some countries have, instead of Opt-in.

while i agree, i don't think there's many other choices that sound any better.

the onus is only that way here because that's the way the law was setup.
the onus is the other way around in certain countries, and despite the donor lists being still of similar percentages to what we have here, i think it'd be easier to work with "This guy definitey doesn't want to donate" rather than "this guy might want to be a donor, but was too lazy to sign onto the register".

oh, i realise we're arguing semantics, and i guess this is the crux of the whole issue, but i just think that it'd be more beneficial for doctors to begin harvesting organs while someone is looking for reasons to stop them, rather than them hanging around waiting while someone gives them a reason to start, because, as i've said, there's a very limited window of opportunity to begin organ harvesting.

i guess it just reflects opinions of the law-makers of the day the system was setup, but i really think that opt-in is far more damaging than opt-out.