Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Recently, the Star took a closer look at the process and the people behind organ donation, as Lakeland HealthCare joins Gift of Life Michigan and many others in a push to add 1 million names to the state’s registry of organ donors.

Most of those volunteers with Gift of Life, which works hard to sign up men and women throughout the state to become donors, spoke of the one crucial element to organ donation that remains a little confusing to some.

It’s no longer just enough to sign the back of your driver’s license in order to become a donor. Registration with Gift of LIfe Michigan is required and the group takes its time at local Secretary of State offices to help get more and more people signed up.

Certainly there are those who have always signed the back of their license, who didn’t hesitate once they were told to register and to whom organ donation is the most natural choice they could make in the face of unfortunate circumstances.

But to others, the thought of it might never have crossed their mind.

Perhaps they simply never had a reason to think about what to do in such a situation.

Perhaps they didn’t feel right about donation for religious reasons.

The Star urges those people to – at the very least – think again.

Gift of Life Michigan offers a multitude of information to help explain everything from what you can do to help save a life to what major religions think about the idea and other facts that dispel any lingering myths.

One person, donating every viable organ or tissue could help up to 50 people.

Men, women and children in need of a heart, or a lung or kidney, mothers and fathers, burn victims and the blind.

The choice to be a donor is a personal one indeed.

But it’s definitely one worth the consideration.

For more information, visit www.giftoflifemichigan.org.