You Must Decide: To Be an Organ Donor or Not

Radio Commentary, WMVV 90.7 New Life FM, March 26, 2010
By Sue Ella Deadwyler

Good morning, Jim. Until 2008, people were not presumed to be organ donors, unless they specifically said they would donate all or part of their body to science or to another person. But in 2008 that law was reversed. Now, Georgia’s organ donor law is based on “presumptive consent,” meaning everyone is presumed to be an organ donor, unless a refusal document has been left with a will or verbal instructions were made with a witness present.

But, there’s a dark side to the organ donor business and it’s about money. In 2006 seven funeral home directors in New York City and Rochester had a scheme to plunder bodies and sell their bones and tissue for transplants. The names of the funeral directors involved were withheld, but all seven agreed to cooperate in the investigation.

One of the four, reportedly, made millions by selling stolen tissue to companies that supply material for medical procedures such as dental implants and hip replacements. Death certificates were falsified and the age of one corpse was shown as 85 instead of 95 and the cause of death was listed as a heart attack instead of lung cancer that had spread to his bones.

In 2007 the man who had made millions and his two funeral-director partners in Philadelphia sold 244 corpses for about $1,000 each to a New York businessman who sold the bones, skin and tissue on the black market, where they were resold for transplants in medical patients worldwide. The man who made millions is now serving 18 to 54 years in prison and another has been convicted and is waiting to be sentenced.

I explain this today because we have an opportunity to amend Georgia’s organ donor law. Representative Bobby Reese introduced H.B. 1235 to return the organ donor law to an opt-in process, as it was before 2008. So, if a decedent does not leave a refusal document, the law would presume that the organs could not be harvested. Please call Representative Sharon Cooper at 404 656-5069* and ask her to pass this bill out of her committee. The state does not own our bodies and they should not presume to harvest our organs unless we expressly give them permission. For Georgia Insight I’m Sue Ella Deadwyler, your Capitol correspondent.