Law should require people who need transplants to be organ donors, says OPO exec

Susan Stuart, President and CEO of the Center for Organ Recovery & Education, has expressed support for one of the ideas behind LifeSharers. Ms. Stuart's organization is the federally designated organ procurement organization for parts of western Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and New York. LifeSharers is a national organ donation network. LifeSharers promotes the concept that everyone who is willing to receive an organ transplant should be willing to be an organ donor.

Here is an excerpt from a story in today's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

"If [the United Network for Organ Sharing] allocated organs first to registered organ donors, more people would donate and thousands of lives would be saved every year," David Undis, LifeSharers executive director, said last year.

The concept gets support from CORE's Ms. Stuart.

"I think there should be legislation that if you are put on the waiting list for an organ, you have to be a donor yourself. It's very discouraging when we have a transplant recipient and they die and we approach the family about donations and they say no."

Ms. Stuart's statement is refreshing. Some OPO executives seem to view LifeSharers as a competitor, but our view is that LifeSharers and the OPOs are all on the same team. We're all trying to increase the number of organ donors.

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