Is it possible to live forever, to make your life everlasting?
That is a question that has been asked by many people. No one has found a solution, but science has gone a lot further. Today it is possible to donate your organs to another human when you die, and you are not in need of them anymore. It cannot make your life everlasting, but it can extend many lives.
Organ donation has become more common. You can donate different organs for instance your heart, liver, lungs and kidney. Kidneys are the only organs that you can donate, while you are alive, because you have two of them, and you can easily live with just one. If you are donating other organs, you have to be dead for the procedure to take place. You choose yourself, if you want to donate your organs, but remember that you can save people’s life by donating organs.
The organ removal
The organ removal has to be done quick after the donor has been declared dead. To take the organs out of the body, it is important that the donor is in a respirator so plenty of oxidized blood throws through the organs. During the removal the body feels warm, and it looks like the human is still alive. The removal takes around five hours, and after the surgery is done, the doctors fix the wounds and it is time for the relatives to say goodbye for the last time. It is always hard for friends and family to accept that he or she has chosen to be a donor. Because it is hard to imagine that the organs live on in another human
while the person has past away.
Everyone who are healthy and wants to donate can easily do it. There is no age limits, though it is not optimal to use hearts from humans who are over the 50-60 years old. But organs like kidneys and livers can be useful even if the person is around 70-80. In every case there will be carried out an estimation of the organs. Every contribution counts, because the need for voluntary donors has always been huge. The waiting list to get a new organ is as long as a lifetime. But the society is aware that it is necessary with more donors, because in this moment several hospitals are deeply in need of donor organs.
The transplantation
The operation where the corrupted organs are replaced is called transplantation. There are several obstacles that make the transplantation difficult. Nowadays the surgical invention has become easier because of the new modern methods and the technical facilities. The obstacle is that the body’s own immune defense mechanism react to transplanted tissue as if it was an unfamiliar element. Therefore it makes it very difficult for the body to accept the new organ. It is most optimal that the donor and recipient has got the same tissue-type, but no one except for twins got the exact same type. So the only way to make the body accept the organ is if you reduce the immune defense mechanism with medicament so the number of white blood corpuscle reduces and prevent them from reacting towards the organ. The patient needs to take medicaments for the rest of the life, but in spite of that it is possible to live a tolerable normal life.
Life with a new organ
A life with a new organ is either good or bad for you. But most of the people, who get a new organ, almost get back to their normal life and maintains a healthy and normal lifestyle as they did before the transplantation. About 90% of the people who have gone through a heart transplantation is alive a year after the operation. After the operation there is a risk that the body might not accept the new organ. Therefore you will need to take some medicine, to slow down your immune defense mechanism. People with transplanted must also go through a rehabilitation therapy progress.
Opinions about organ donation
There are different opinions about organ donation. If you look at it from a religious perspective, the most religions are supporting donation and do not see it as a sin. Nothing about organ donation is written in the different religions because donation was not a relevant theme at that time, so it is a topic that the religions later had to decide if it was something they would support.
The principle of Christianity is doing something for others, and hoping that someone will do the same for you. And there is written in the Bible that Jesus said ”You got it for nothing, give it for nothing”. So they find it as an unselfish gesture to donate your organs. The Jewish supports it while there in a Jewish old publication stands “The person who safe a single life safe the whole world”. Some other religions as Islam and Buddhism are not exactly sure if they support it or not because both religions got publications which argument both for and against organ donation. One of the only religions, which do not allow it at all, is the Jehovahs Witnesses. They compare it with a form of cannibalism. The religion has said before that they do not think there is a difference between eating humans or get a transplantation. But transplantation is no longer forbidden and every Jehovah`s Witness can donate their organs if they want to. So organ donation is primarily looked good at in the different religions.
In 1990 there was made a law in Denmark that made it possible to carry out transplantations from brain dead people. The Danes has generally always been positive according organ donation and today 84% of the citizens want to receive an organ and 74% wants to become a donor.
It is not possible to make your life everlasting, or extend your own life by yourself. But you can donate your organs and even donate blood to extend others life. And then you can hope that if you in need of an organ, someone wants to donate.