Worldwide, a lot of people are waiting for an organ transplant. The procedure is very time consuming. First you need to apply for a transplant, then they have to find the right person with the right conditions for the organ. The waiting time can be very long, and not everyone has the time to wait.
But a new trend is upcoming: using social media to find an organ. By launching online petitions or soliciting donors on Facebook, some patients can find an organ faster than via the normal way.
Here’s an example: Jerry Wilde, a college professor in Indiana, was desperately needing a kidney. He first updated his status by stating that he needed a kidney. A student who saw that, thought it wouldn’t reach a large audience, so instead, she created a Facebook page. Shortly after launching the page, a woman Jerry didn’t know wanted to become his kidney donor. After corresponding on Facebook, the kidney is now inside the body of Jerry.
But using this method can make organ donations unfair. If you’re for example young and very attractive, the chance of getting an organ is higher than if you’re old and/or ugly. Also doctors are afraid that this is going to be a ‘popularity contest’, rather than just saving the person.
What do you think? Is this the future of organ donations? Do you think this is going to be fair or that it really depends on your look? And is this going to shorten the already too long waiting list?
I think this is a great example of how ICTs can become a facilitator in normally long and frustrating medical processes such as finding a suitable organ donor. I do think that eHealth is the future in many of these processes, all though in the case of Jerry Wilde i think it was not so much an example of how it should be done but rather that it can be done. In other words, the creating of a Facebook page in order to find an organ donor seems like a one time case, if everyone would be doing this you would never find yourself around these thousands of pages and as you pointed out it would lead to biased picking of the people in need of an organ (looks, popularity, age, ethnicity, etc.). However with a proper, and supervised, social media app that discards such information and presents people in need of an organ all over the world, this could turn out to be the future of organ donations. Especially as this could attract a lot of people who so far did not consider organ donating, as they would be confronted with people desperately in need of an organ on their social media platforms.
I think the greatest question is of how the patients should be presented, to be perfectly fair all their information should be discarded, however do people still want to donate their organ without knowing the patient and his/her dramatic background story. And if the patients in need of an organ would post a short summary about themselves and their need of an organ, would that not give the organ donors a perverted power over life or death by their preferences?
I agree! In our current time of technological innovation we can strive using social media as a gateway for people with needs gaining help. We all know there are people willing to donate, especially with thousands of charities providing sites on Facebook and Twitter as a means to provide and gain funds for the need.
I do not think it has anything to do about fairness or unfairness, because there are people who list themselves as willing to donate a kidney, and yet do not ever doing so, because there was not a candidate to donate to. Therefore, this method ensures people, who are also unaware of their donating capabilities, to take part. Social media taps into the market of unknowns and everything, so why not?
I do agree with both previous comments. Social media is a great facilitator of communication. Not only for leisure purposes but also for good causes such as looking for donors. The exposure is much greater and the reach of potential donors far exceeds the traditional ways of “waiting list”. However, when it comes to social media, there is always the question of trustworthiness of information. As we all may know, there were/are many hoaxes that flood the sites. Also, people are getting immune against what they see. The more exposure to this kind of topic could lead to further neglect of this matter. So, for this to work, there could be an organisation involved that could regulate and manage this, engage people in the cause and find potential donors.