• Dearche
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    1 year ago

    Overall I agree. While every death is a tragedy, the reality is that if someone is denied a compatible organ, it means that there was someone who received it and was willing to go through more effort to ensure that they would survive the operation long term.

    COVID still exists, and it is still running rampant through the world, and it is still a legitimate threat to those with weakened immune systems, something that all organ recipients are.

    This is virtually the same as someone being denied a lung transplant because the refused to quit smoking. Someone died to give you that lung, and so if you’re not going to treat it with respect, you don’t deserve it as much as someone who will.

    That said, the numbers for transplants I’ve found are a lot more positive than I had expected: Organ transplants in Canada, 2021: Donations and need. That said, most organ transplants are from the deceased, and of those, a significant percentage were from Ontario and BC (adjusted for population) interestingly enough.

    Though with that said as well, in 2022 80% of donations were from the deceased, 52% were from family members, and compared to 2936 transplants, there were an additional 3777 people on the wait list. 701 Canadians were removed from the wait list that same year, 39% of whom had died while waiting. (https://www.cihi.ca/en/summary-statistics-on-organ-transplants-wait-lists-and-donors)

    The numbers are pretty uplifting overall, but until we can commercially grow organs (either in a vat or a donor pig) we need to take care of donated organs and maximize their value by preferentially giving them to those who are most likely to survive receiving them in the long term.