Those Willing to Donate Organs Can Legally Direct Their Gift
Those Willing to Donate Organs Can Legally Direct Their Gift
Editor,
Regarding the article “The Gift of Life” (Nov. 28):
The generosity of live organ donors like Dottie Stewart is remarkable. But we wouldn’t need many live organ donors if Americans weren’t burying or cremating 20,000 transplantable organs every year.
There is a better way to put a big dent in the organ shortage – if you don’t agree to donate your organs when you die, then you go to the back of the waiting list if you ever need an organ to live.
Giving organs first to organ donors will convince more people to register as organ donors. It will also make the organ allocation system fairer. About 60 percent of the organs transplanted in the United States go to people who haven’t agreed to donate their own organs when they die.
Anyone who wants to donate their organs to others who have agreed to donate theirs can join LifeSharers.
LifeSharers is a nonprofit network of organ donors who agree to offer their organs first to other organ donors when they die.
They do this through a form of directed donation that is legal in all 50 states and under federal law.
Anyone can join for free at www.lifesharers.org or by calling 1-888-ORGAN88.
David J. Undis
Executive director, Lifesharers
Nashville, Tenn.
Violence in Entertainment Exposes Our Kids to Risks
Editor,
Articles about violent video games, films, and TV programs, such as the one that appeared Nov. 30 in the Free Lance (“Group Cites Video Games for Youth Violence, Sex”), provoke questions – questions that affect each of us as we go our way day by day.
Does this form of entertainment promote and strengthen desirable things in our society? What effect does the viewing of a bloody chain saw wielder have on a video player?
How are family values and loving relationships affected by witnessing the physical and verbal abuse of one parent by another?
What part has violent entertainment played in lives of children who have gone astray? Especially those behind barbed wire or separated from others in special schools?
The rating of such entertainment by the Institute on Media and Family is a step in the right direction. May parents use it as a guide.
But where is the outcry of indignation by concerned parents who know that such trash appears in the living rooms of so many of their neighbors’ homes.
Good citizens, when you see unrestricted or unclassified video games on the shelves of a store, let the manager know how you feel. You can change our community for the better.
Peter Frusetta
Tres Pinos
