The launch of a state-authorized organ and tissue donor registry works to save lives and dispel negative connotations about organ donation. A local professor and his wife experienced firsthand the emotional loss and gain by donating the organs of their guardian child.
By Bridget Graham-Gungoren/Special to The Malibu Times
Many have heard, or maybe even received a warning e-mail, with one of the many versions of the old urban legend-a traveler wakes up in a bathtub filled with ice, and realizes they have been drugged and one of their kidneys is missing, stolen by organ thieves. The television show “Law and Order” has done at least two different episodes of illegal organ thievery, and the 2002 film “Dirty Pretty Things” told the tale of freedom obtained via illegally obtained organs, all of which conjure up negative connotations of organ donation.
In April, the Donate Life California Organ & Tissue Donor Registry, a private, nonprofit, state-authorized donor organization, kicked off a statewide registry to save lives and, in the interim, also dispel commonly believed myths such as these.
Truth of the matter is, per the Donate Life Web site, as of this past March, 18,463 patients in California were waiting for organs-87,305 nationally.
“With every decision to donate, an average of at least three lives hang in the balance,” said Bryan Stewart, director of communication for OneLegacy, the federally recognized organ procurement organization, which serves seven Southern California counties and one of four such organizations within the state-each assigned to different territories.
“When it comes to donation, it is special and rare; 700 patients per year receive organ donations,” Stewart said of the L.A. territory.
Prior to the official registry, most who wanted to donate organs put a pink dot on the back of their driver’s license-the awareness program for more than 20 years-falsely believing the Department of Motor Vehicles maintains a database.
“A lot of people think that the pink dot means they’re registered,” Stewart said. “The dot only leads to a donor card search.”
However, the personal belongings are not usually with someone at the time of need. “With the registry, there is certainty to know of someone’s wishes,” Stewart explained.
The proposed bill, SB 689, currently going through the state capital, will, if passed, Stewart said, “officially integrate the donation registry into the driver’s license application renewal and ID process.”
The pink dots will still be recognized and draw awareness.
The registration with Donate Life California Organ & Tissue Donor Registry is a legally binding document, rarely challenged by family members, and only records enough information to identify a particular individual as the registrant.
“The registry does ask for personal information, but not a Social Security number,” Stewart said.
After two months in place, 58,000 registrants have been recorded, “well ahead of expectations,” Stewart said. The goal for the first year was 150,000.
Pepperdine University professor Michael Murrie is now an ambassador for OneLegacy, after experiencing firsthand how organ donation saves lives.
In the fall of 2003, a young girl, Kimberly Kimble Gast, 15, who had been living with Murrie, his wife, Jackie, and family for three months after her mother, Terrie Kimble, died, and who had previously lived with them during her 7th and 8th grade school years due to school-district conflicts, was killed in a car crash in which she received a blow to the temple.
Starting her sophomore year and a captain of her junior varsity cheerleading team at Agoura High School, Gast was hit by a driver with a .24 blood alcohol level-three times the legal limit. Two others were also killed in the accident, and six were seriously or moderately injured.
Gast had told both her sister and Jackie Murrie that she had wanted to donate her own organs after the disappointment with the inability to donate her mother’s organs after her death.
“Everyone pretty much knew her wishes … the decision was simpler than it normally would be during this difficult time … ” Murrie said in a recent interview.
As an ambassador, Murrie speaks about his own personal story of loss and gain; he said he is able to put an “emotional dimension on the whole matter.”
Murrie said he supports and advocates the new statewide registry to ensure that others are educated. The registry, he said, “takes uncertainty out of the process at an awkward time.”
Meeting one of the recipients of Kim’s organs, after a series of anonymous letter writing turned personal, solidified the beauty as well as the sorrow of the process, Murrie said.
“It turned out to be one of the greatest comforts of the whole process … that her death was not completely in vain. Others are enjoying life because of her.”
Gast’s organs could be donated because she was pronounced brain dead. Four people’s lives were saved with the five organs donated from Kimberly Gast.
Another myth, Stewart said, is that people believe that doctors will not work as hard to save them if they are registered organ donors.
“It is two different processes,” he explained.
A patient is first pronounced brain dead by a medical team. Then the organ procurement organization is contacted to work with families for transplant procedures.
“People feel that donation happens more often than it does,” Stewart said. “Only 1 percent of all deaths are under the condition of brain death.”
If the heart stops, there is no blood or oxygen pumping to the organs to keep them alive for donor eligibility; but when the brain is dead, the heart doesn’t stop pumping blood.
Stewart said additional myths include religious beliefs, “yet every major religion supports it [organ donation].”
Others believe that only the rich and famous are at the top of the waiting list.
“The top of the list is urgency of need and length of time already waited, along with other medical criteria,” Stewart said.
“And the power of the media,” Stewart said, “is much stronger,” even with how hard organ procurement organizations work to dispel misconceptions. “Our hope is that viewers see it as fiction, not reality.”
There is a currently a proactive national movement by United Network for Organ Sharing to work with producers, who have the most power, to provide accurate information for media programs.
“We want to give them resources and facts,” Stewart said.
Additional information can be found at www.onelegacy.org; Registration for Donors www.donatelifecalifornia.org