Why You Should Be an Organ Donor

Introduction

Everyone in this room has the power to save someone’s life. We all have valuable organs that we can donate after we die. In fact according to organdonor.gov, 1 organ donor can save up to 8 lives.

Hi, I’m Nicole and I am going to persuade you on why everyone in here should become an organ donor.

I personally am an organ donor and today I am going to talk to you about what organ donation is, then go over some misconceptions about it and finally, I will tell you how easy it is to become an organ donor.

First topic

• Main Point 1- Let’s start with my first main point, what is organ donation?

1. First of all, people who need organ transplants are usually people with kidney failure, heart disease, lung disease, or cirrhosis of the liver.

2. In Tom Scheves’s article about “How Organ Donation Works”- Organ donation is when you take healthy organs and tissues from one person and transplants them into another. Organs you can donate include: the heart, kidneys, pancreas, lungs, liver and intestines. Tissues that can be donated are the eyes, skin, bone, heart valves and tendons.

3. There are two types of donors. The first is people who are brain dead but are still on life support. They are technically dead, but the body is still functioning, so the organs remain healthy. And they can potentially donate all of the tissues and organs I just listed.

4. The second type of donor is a living donor. These transplants are another alternative for people in need of new organs. The types of organs that can be supplied by living donors include: one of your kidneys or a portion of your liver or lung.

5. Once a patient agrees to an organ transplant, doctors put the patient’s name on a waiting list with the United Network for Organ Sharing, or UNOS. UNOS has a database with all patients waiting for an organ. Their board of directors is made up of transplant doctors, who establishes policies that decide who will get which organs.

According to UNOS’s website, as of this month- there are almost 119,000 people waiting for an organ, that’s enough to people to fill the dolphin’s stadium twice over! And nearly 5,000 of them are from right here in Florida. Unfortunately, an average of 18 people die each day waiting for a transplant that couldn't take place because of the shortage of donated organs.

Take a look at the graph…

Statistics can sometimes be confusing. One thing to remember is that every number in the statistic is a person, a person who needs your help and is waiting for a lifesaving transplant. They could be a mom, a dad, a brother, a sister or even a child, someone who is important to someone else.

Add story of person waiting