Is there a reason I should donate a kidney to a stranger now, rather than just waiting till I die, at which point both kidneys will probably be donated to strangers anyway?

frankPodmore@slrpnk.net to No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world – 73 points –

I've had an organ donor card in my wallet for as long as I can remember and I've always made it very clear to my loved ones that I want all my organs to be used when I die.

My question is, given that I only need one kidney, would it be better if I were to donate the other one right away rather than after my inevitable demise?

Obviously, my organs won't be used in the unlikely event that I die in some unrecoverable way, like being lost at sea or something. And there's always the possibility that a close relative might need a kidney at some point, so I should arguably save it for them.

Is there some other reason to do it now?

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ah, but[^1] if you donate a kidney you go to the top of the queue

you're losing one when you don't need one, and receiving one when you do

insurance salesman here[^2], just in case that might have gibt unnoticed

[^1]: to the best of my knowledge

[^2]: obviously not

But it won’t be your own kidney and you will have to take drugs to try and stop your body rejecting it.

Source? When they proposed to do this for blood donors, it got shut down in a hurry.

::: spoiler of course they do: they've only got one kidney, so it's more important for them to get a replacement quickly

alright, i was being facetious. a cursory search [says(https://healthmanagement.org/c/icu/news/organ-donors-who-need-kidneys-go-to-top-of-transplant-list) this, but it's the states only, and i have no idea if it's true or not. i imagine not, but i don't know

:::

If you read the articles you linked, you’ll notice some specifically fishy language. Neither one says that donors are promised first dibs, only that they often get it. If it’s not written down, you have nothing if they decide to do it differently.

i know. like i said, i don't believe it

^i^ ^was^ ^just^ ^trying^ ^to^ ^be^ ^funny^ ^:^ ^(^

I'm guessing you didn't manually insert those footnotes, how did you?

lemmy supports two footnote formats

the basic type like so:

comment body here[^1]

[^1]: and the footnote at the very bottom of the comment

or the easy to write type

comment body here^[and the inline footnote]

(note the different locations for the caret)

keep in mind that they don't work on most apps, and some frontends