Organ donation is increasingly pushed as the wonder solution to health problems, based on many false assumptions and myths, pushed in multi-million dollar propaganda campaigns. Let's expose these organ donation myths:
Myth -- Doctors will try to keep me alive even though I am an organ donor.
Reality -- The needs of the brain-injured patient come second to the transplant agenda. Doctors will focus on preserving donor organs for harvesting, through various procedures that actually harm you and undermine your recovery. Donors also get the apnoea "brain death test" which may cause rather than diagnose "brain death".
Myth -- Organ and Tissue donation will not disfigure me.
Reality -- Surgeons may remove the eyes, skin, tendons, ligaments, large veins, fascia, major and minor bones. Donors can be literally "cleaned out" by organ and tissue harvesting.
Myth -- Surgeons will wait until I am dead before removing organs.
Reality -- Dr Paul A Byrne, neonatalogist and pediatrician, says: "In order to be suitable for transplant, (heart, liver, lungs, kidneys and pancreas) need to be removed from the donor before respiration and circulation cease. Otherwise, these organs are not suitable, since damage to the organs occurs within a brief time after circulation of blood with oxygen stops."
Myth -- No one will gain financially from my organs and body tissues.
Reality -- Everyone gets a financial benefit from the harvested organs and body parts except the donor. A body donated in the United States generates up to two million dollars of medical and cosmetic activity. The government pays for a lot of this, using taxpayers money. The unfortunate organ "donor" is slugged thousands of dollars for their hospital costs and for their subsequent funeral expenses.
Myth -- The wealthy, powerful and famous won't have precedent over regular people for my body parts.
Reality -- The poor are usually uninsured and unable to afford the massive hospital and surgical costs associated with organ transplants. But the rich can afford immediate treatment in private hospitals, so they get precedence over the donors' body parts.
Myth -- Anyone can be an organ donor.
Reality -- Surgeons harvest organs from patients with strong and still beating hearts. Only 1 percent of donors die this way. Surgeons don't want vital organs from donors who are completely dead and whose hearts have stopped. Therefore, only 1 percent of prospective donors donate vital organs. Most people can become eye, bone and skin donors.
Myth -- Organ selling and organ robbing stories are silly "urban myths".
Reality -- Organ trafficking and human trafficking for organ donation is widespread throughout many countries. There are examples in several countries in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Latin America and China (where political prisoners, such as falun gong practitioners, are summarily executed by a gunshot to the head before organ harvesting). Harvesting begins with their hearts still beating and they die during the organ removal process.