“Against this need to comfort and be respectful comes another reality. The demand for organs is much higher than the supply. Every 90 minutes, someone in the U.S. dies waiting for an organ transplant.”

Read more about Gift of Hope
at: www.giftofhope.org

"I was a psychology major at Wabash, and understanding how to deal with doctors, families, and others in a stressful situation, was certainly beneficial.
But the whole liberal arts education prepared me to do the kind of job I do. I had to learn such a broad range of subjects, and I draw from those now."

Magazine
Summer/Fall 2002

The Gift of Hope


by Jerry Anderson ’71

In July, the Regional Organ Bank of Illinois will change its name to The Gift of Hope. CEO Jerry Anderson ’71 says it’s not a public relations gambit, but an attempt to educate.

“We’re changing the to reflect the fact that we’re dealing with people here. Giving life to another is the greatest gift of all, and organ donation gives that gift and the hope that comes to those who receive transplants or are waiting for transplants.”

With more than 4,600 people in Illinois alone waiting for transplants, and 16 people in the U.S. dying every day due to the shortage, education is literally a life or death proposition.

WM asked Anderson to discuss some of the ethical issues the people in his organization faces every day.

Anderson: The ethical issues arise the moment we talk to the family about donation. Usually it’s not been a slow death. The loved one has died of some sort of trauma, a sudden death, a cerebral bleed, or a severe head injury.
And the family is in a traumatic situation, under tremendous stress. But that’s also a critical time for us. The donation has to be done very quickly, and we require consent from the family.

One of the issues that arises is “informed consent.” We must properly inform the family of what is going to be done, and they must give an informed consent. So we try to educate the family about organ and tissue donation. We make sure we’re describing things in a way that makes sense to that person. Our staff is trained to avoid describing organs and procedures in medical terms that many people won’t understand. No jargon allowed.

Even before we talk to the family, they often wonder, “Did the doctors really try to save my loved one’s life, or did they just want to get the organ?” Most organ donations come from people who have been declared brain dead. You’re talking about a person who, at the time of brain death is on a ventilator and appears to be alive. So when they’re being declared dead, you’re looking at this person you love—they’re breathing, the heart’s beating, and it even looks like there’s hope. But there isn’t. The neurologists have done tests, there’s no blood flow to the brain. But when you’re looking at this and then you hear about organ donation, it comes to your mind that they’re not really trying to save my loved one.

Against the need to comfort and be respectful at this difficult time comes another reality. The demand for organs is much higher than the supply. Every 90 minutes, someone in the U.S. dies waiting for an organ transplant that doesn’t come in time. Our staff member talking with the family and trying to answer their questions knows that if this family says no to donation, someone, or several people, will die. But our staff member can’t coerce the family into a decision.
It’s a very difficult task, and it takes a special sort of person to do it.

What sorts of issues arise with recipients?
One of the questions we face is: do you give the organ to the person who is the sickest, or do you give it to the person who has the best chance to survive? The way the system works now, it goes to the sickest patient. The organ might be better utilized by someone who is not as sick—a person much more likely to survive. If somebody is waiting for a liver, the longer they wait, the higher their priority on the waiting list. But as they wait they become more ill, sometimes to the point that, even if they get the liver, their probability of survival is less than 50 %. Someone who isn’t as sick would have a 95% chance of survival. Who do you give it to? Right now we give it to the person who only has the 50% chance of survival.

Some patients receive multiple organ transplants. You’ve got a decision to make there: Is it better for one patient to receive two or three organs, or do you take those two or three organs and give them to two or three different individuals, perhaps saving two or three lives?

Who makes those decisions?
The guidelines for those types of decisions are made on a national level. Federal regulations created an Organ Procurement Transplant Network, and the actual organization that has that contract is UNOS (United Network for Organ Sharing). This is a non-profit organization made up of experts in transplantation: surgeons, ethicists, public members, organ recipients, donor family members, people from organ procurement organizations like us. These people review these issues and set the guidelines.

I’m on committees there and have been on the board.

How do you prepare for work like this?
I was a psychology major at Wabash, and understanding how to deal with doctors, families, and others in a stressful situation, was certainly beneficial. But the whole liberal arts education prepared me to do the kind of job I do. I had to learn such a broad range of subjects, and I draw from those now. I wasn’t very good in biology, but understanding the basics is essential to my work here. Taking philosophy and learning to think things through was important, too.

We hear people use words like “harvest” and “procurement” when they talk about organ donation. There’s a de-humanizing aspect to all of this.
That’s a very important issue for us. Once a month, we have people come in—donor families and recipients—who talk with us about their experiences, to remind us what’s going on. In any field you can become distant; you could say “we’re just dealing with parts,.” But what we’re really about is tying humanity together. The families of people who die are given the opportunity to make something good come out of a tragic loss—to save a life. It may seem a small consolation at first, but often down the road, if both parties want to meet (and this is happening more and more often ), we give that information,. and it brings a new meaning to life for these people.

People who receive organ transplants often feel as if they’ve been born again. They do things with their life that they wouldn’t have done before. They want to give back in some way.

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