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Honolulu Lite
WHEN you die, your soul may go to Heaven but your guts belong to the government. That's the essence of the most ghoulish proposal to creep out of the state Legislature this year. Organ donor bill
should be buriedActually, by the time this column runs, a measure to make organ donation MANDATORY should already be at room temperature and fast on its way to the Silly Bill Burial Ground.
The amazing thing is that this icy assault on the most private and important part of life -- dying -- was flung on the table by Senate President Norman Mizuguchi. As Senate prez, Mizuguchi should be running these turkeys out of the Capitol with a whip and a chair, not spawning them.
Like most silly bills, the mandatory organ donation bill was dragged into chambers on a chariot of good intentions. Organ donation is an important issue. There are not enough willing donors for eyes, livers and other innards to cover the need for these body parts.
The key word is WILLING. To legislators, it is an extravagant waste of resources to bury perfectly good human parts.
I know that if one of my family members needed an organ transplant to survive, I'd be angry with stingy dead people who refuse to donate their organs.
That's one reason I give blood. About every eight weeks, I donate a pint of my blood so that others can live. My blood. It's a decision I made because I'd feel guilty carting around all this perfectly good blood others may need. If the government ordered me to give blood, I'd feel differently.
THERE'S a huge need for blood. I encourage all my friends to give blood. Everyone who can should. But many people are just afraid of needles and/or bleeding, even in controlled circumstances. Some have an unnatural fear of hospital-like settings. Others are superstitious.
There are a million reasons -- most complete hogwash when compared to the life of a child seriously injured in a car accident who needs blood to live -- people don't want to be poked with sharp objects.
So it feels good to give blood. It feels horrible not to sign up as an organ donor. I know I should. I don't have any religious or moral arguments against it. I just haven't been able to do it.
There are apparently many more people like me in the community. But the bottom line is that my body is mine and my family's. It doesn't belong to the government. So if I can't quite get on the organ-donor bandwagon right now, it's my decision.
And despite the need for registered organ donors, even the Hawaii Organ Donation Coalition, made up of a number of groups involved in organ transplants, oppose the Mizuguchi bill. Education, not Draconian legislation is what is needed, they believe.
The chilling thing about Mizuguchi's proposal is that it required an anatomical gift from a dead person unless a family member objects. Gift? If you are going to try to snatch our organs, at least be up front about it. Ordering people to give up their organs is not asking for a gift.
The bill also would have required family members to voice their objection within 24 hours of a death, in a notarized statement. It seems awfully cruel to make grieving family members jump through such legal hoops just to be able to bury their kin in a way they see fit.
This bill was DOA when it was proposed. Bury it intact, senator, and get back to business.
Charles Memminger, winner of
National Society of Newspaper Columnists
awards in 1994 and 1992, writes "Honolulu Lite"
Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Write to him at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin,
P.O. Box 3080, Honolulu, 96802
or send E-mail to charley@nomayo.com or
71224.113@compuserve.com.
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