Why would someone not be an organ donor?

Religion. Or, they just don’t want to.

Some people are superstitious.

There are quite a few religious/spiritual/cultural beliefs that do not allow for it.

I’ll give you one example if you promise not to attack it too vehemently. Some tribal cultures believe that everything you came into the world with you need to leave with. So this includes placenta, umbilical cord, and all your organs. If you have your appendix or tonsils removed you fight the hospital to keep them. You have to understand that most people who believe this way are older tribal people who grew up in a world that is very much different from the world we live in today. These type of beliefs were so central to general lifestyle that changing them in old age just doesn’t seem to work, for many (not all).

I think organ donation is great. I also believe in allowing people to hold their religious and cultural beliefs. Choice is what creates freedom :)

Some people do not like to have other people ripping their guts out.

It might hurt.

Some people are concerned their body would be used for medical experiments…

I’m not sure if that is the case, but that is what I’ve heard some people say.

@RedPowerLady And who gets the placenta? Is it considered the childs or the mothers, since it’s technically the mothers organ.

you are not necessarily saving someone’s life. there is a possibility, but not necessarily. sometimes the organ is rejected, sometimes it is not transplanted in time etc

and lets say you were a health nut your whole life. took really good care of your body, you might not want to risk an alcoholic getting your liver and destroying it and then needing a whole other person’s liver. (or smoker, fast food lover, etc)

i find it slightly annoying that people “expect” everyone to be an organ donor.

so many people say things like “when it is your time, it is your time” or “god works in mysterious ways” but the second they are in an accident or get sick, it is not their time, it is time to get someone else’s organs.

I am an organ donor but I still find it creepy. The idea of cutting someone up, taking their organs and putting them in another person is a little barbaric. The idea of having another’s organs in me is creepy.

I hear that the placenta is mighty tasty.

@ChazMaz I think I just threw up a little in my mouth…enough Fluther for one day.

@se_ven actually, the root of the word “placenta” comes from the latin word “placenta” pronounced “plaKenta” and meaning CAKE! eating the placenta was not uncommon…. CAKE as in BIRTH DAY cake! literally!!!!

I do love cake.
So when a person jumps out of a cake, it represents birth?

@ChazMaz i believe that tradition came a bit later in history… perhaps when bachelor party strippers were invented

People may be afraid that the EMTs and whatnot may see their donor card and not try as hard to save their life.
Not something I legitimately believe in, but I know there are people out there who do.

Personally, I’m thrilled that my organs will be used to save other people’s lives when I die. It’s like I’ll keep on living after I die. What greater legacy can there be than more life when you die?

To answer the question: I know some pretty stupid people. I heard one guy once say exactly what @Sarcasm just said. I was too slow in typing.

Many cultures feel the body cannot be cut up or have bits taken away from it because then the soul has no home or the soul’s voyage to the after life is impaired. Oops! I see @RedPowerLady already addressed this

However, some people are not organ donors because they have HIV or Hepatitis or some other communicable disease that would pass on to the recipient.

And some simply cannot get beyond the selfishness of visualizing oneself as impervious to harm and able to live forever.

Yup, what @Sarcasm said.

@tinyfaery Well as long as you don’t think its creepier than people dying while waiting for a transplant while so many organs in good condition are being tossed into coffins everyday.

I don’t see anything creepy about it… if I don’t need them anymore I will gladly give them to someone else.

@se_ven…and when you’re dead, using your body for medical experiments would be a problem because?

@casheroo It may be different per tribe. From what I understand of my tribe the placenta belongs to baby/child as it was essentially the baby’s life source.

Chinese Organ Thieves, that’s why.

Because they’re selfish, paranoid, stupid, or some combination of these.

Need I say more?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sp-pU8TFsg0

@nikipedia Lurve! I proudly display my desire to donate on my license. My husband doesn’t. When I ask him why he never can answer

@nikipedia i completely agree and wish i had the courage to say what you did

I think loads of people, apart from religious reasons, just are to complacent to take a stand. In my opinion everyone should be a donor by default and have to take an active stand, fill in the forms etc., not to be a donor. I think you need a strong reason to decline donating your organs to save lives and further research, not the other way around.

why does everyone care so much what people chose to do or not do with their guts?

People dying isn’t creepy, it’s natural and unavoidable. It will happen.

It’s rude to tell people they are selfish for not being organ donors.

@nikipedia . . .Choosing what is done to your own body is selfish and stupid? Don’t ever let me catch you saying your are pro-choice.

For the record, I am an organ donor.

@Blondesjon: Choosing not to save people’s lives with your dead body that you’re not using anymore is completely different from choosing what to do with your body while you’re still alive. Apples and oranges.

I have known two people (both children) who would have died without organ transplants. Both of them were on the brink of death when they got their transplants. Their illnesses were agonizing and nearly ruined their families’ lives. Receiving their transplants was the most joyful day their families ever knew. People who are unwilling to donate their organs are completely despicable to me.

I’m not an organ donor, for the record. I was kind of put off by the whole idea of it when the time came to choose. I guess it just seemed a little odd to me. I may end up changing that later on, though.

@nikipedia . . .But it is ok for a child to be killed before it’s born?

I guess it’s just a matter of timing then?

@Blondesjon: Why are you trying to start a fight about abortion? One, I never said I was pro-choice. Two, organ donation is about REMOVING ORGANS FROM A DEAD BODY. Abortion is about REMOVING A FETUS FROM A LIVE BODY. Do you need me to explain what “live” and “dead” mean or do you get it now? Wikipedia may be helpful too if you’re struggling!

@nikipedia . . .Tissue is tissue is tissue.

I just find people who refer to others as STUPID for their own, personal decisions, to be despicable. Emily Post may be helpful too if you’re struggling!

Some people don’t even want to be cut up to be embalmed.

@Blondesjon: Okay. So you wouldn’t mind if I swapped out your kids with a dead frog because tissue is tissue is tissue, right?

Sometimes people’s decisions are stupid and selfish and despicable. Murderers and rapists come to mind. Can I not judge them?

How much better is a person who refers to children as no better than a “dead frog” or makes broad, sweeping statements about the “stupidity” of personal choice than a murderer or a rapist?

I don’t know, probably a lot better because they’re not RAPING OR KILLING SOMEONE.

Also, you seem to have completely missed my point. You said that tissue = tissue = tissue. I pointed out that by your logic, kid = dead frog. Get it?

@nikipedia It seems like this conversation has gone WAY off topic. Abortion has nothing whatsoever to do with organ donation.

Thanks @avvooooooo, I totally agree.

I thought a person needed a beating heart for their organs to be removed? I can’t find any facts online, and I don’t think I should trust tv doctors…@pnl doesn’t like that lol

@nikipedia . . . All I get is that you referred to a person’s final decision about their own body as “stupid, selfish, and despicable”.

I find that stupid, selfish, and despicable.

I agree that oversweeping judgements about people is not appropriate. There are many reasons people choose not to donate organs and some of them I find very convincing. I also think @blondesjon has hit it right on the head. We have a choice what to do with our bodies and our families have a choice what to do with them after we have passed. I could probably make a very convincing argument about how important it is for some cultures to be able to make such choices, as history has shown us. At the same time I understand the emotion that @nikipedia has, watching two children who need organ donations must be a very emotional phenomenon. In fact I have a family member who needed one as a child as well. Even with that emotion I think we should accept people’s right to choose. Instead of judging all those who do not want to donate as nasty horrible people we should just do some better education about what organ donation means. Even with that some people will choose not to donate, that doesn’t make them horrible people. It may make their choice horrible (which i would argue is not always the case) but it doesn’t make the person stupid, selfish, and worst of all despicable.

@RedPowerLady Hella GA. :) AFAIC “despicable” is with deliberate acts of evil, which I do not believe me choosing not to be a donor is. (The wording of that previous sentence is awful, I know. :P

@DominicX Thank you :)

Survival instinct. We abhor our own mortality. Organ donation means facing it, we do not like facing reality so best to deny it, thus we try and keep our useless organs in a final fit of flawed self-preservation.

Do we really want to mandate that everyone be forced into this decision?

I’ve been pretty selfish all my life so maybe being an organ donor is a good way to make up for some of that. If I can possibly make a difference in someone’s life, why not? I’m already dead. What do I have to lose?

For everyone who is against it for reasons other than religion- your opinion would most likely change real quickly if you were the one needing the organ. Very selfish.

@BBSDTfamily So true. That’s what ultimately changed my views on the whole thing. Putting yourself in someone else’s shoes can be pretty powerful.

@ItalianPrincess1217 Yes, in almost every single aspect of life.

I’m not an organ donor for religious reasons. If it wasn’t for that, I probably would be. Interestingly enough, I’m allowed to donate an organ while I’m alive, to a specific recipient. Once I’ve passed though, it’s considered a desecration of the body and not permitted.

Still, I think it’s silly to call non-donors stupid, selfish or paranoid. Everyone gets to make his own decisions about his life and property.

@drdoombot but withholding organs after you’re dead is actively making a decision about somebody else life. I think that any organs needed “in someone else” should cease to be a persons property after they die.

There is the non-religious, non-selfish reason that you are donating your body to science. Organ donation is organ donation, but those doctors won’t be who they are without corpses to cut up in med school. Investigative forces won’t know how long a body has been decaying in a half buried plastic tube unless someone sends their dead body to one of the body farms.

There are society advancing things to do with your corpse that don’t include giving the organs to others. These are important and legitimate reasons. At any given time, I strongly suspect (though I never got numbers on this in the question I asked) there are far more organ donors around than body-to-science donors.

I didn’t have health insurance until I was about 36 years old. Up till then I figured, why should I donate my organs to help someone who has medical insurance while I am excluded from that same benefit pool, especially if my death is likely to have been hastened by lack of medical care? I suspect that there are 40 to 50 million Americans who feel the same way.

@avvooooooo Part of why I want people to remove the organs from my dead body is because becoming embalmed seems disgusting to me. I’d rather save who I could and then give my carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and other pieces back to the earth.

I am an organ donor. I know there is a huge lack of organ donors around the world. I know people use their religious beliefs to say they can’t be an organ donor ,but then If they need a kidney ,they are willing to travel to China to buy a kidney from a condemned prisoner. If they are religious , surely they would not want a kidney from a condemned prisoner? I would offer my living kidney for free to a nice compassionate person who would have mercy on my Soul and be willing to help me with something which is Legal in a few Countries , It is something In I would feel would be the right thing to do.I’mnotagreat person but I am content to know that at least when I die my organs, I hope, will go to people who need them.

I would never become an organ donor, even though that may sound heartless, pardon the pun. Once people know I’m an organ donor, they’ll feel free to take my organs, even though I’m not dead or dying. Call it paranoia.