Sally Satel

A Second Chance at Life Sally Satel’s argument in “Death’s Waiting List”, states that there is an extreme lack of organ donors in this society. “70,000 Americans are waiting for kidneys, according to The United Network for Organ Sharing” and “only about 16,000 people received one last year. “ In large cities, where the ratio of acceptable organs to needy patients is worst, the wait is five to eight years and is expected to double by 2014 “. There is no reason why the wait should be this long because any one can be an organ donor and Satel does a great job of explaining the benefits throughout in her essay. As a previous member of the waiting list, Satel resorted to desperate measures when she considered going to the black market to obtain a kidney that she needed as well as trying a website called matchingdonors.com. She was lucky enough to find a match on the website, but unfortunately he fell through. As far as the black market goes, she thought it was too risky and unsafe even though she was in a life or death situation. This all could have been prevented if more people in our country were to consider themselves organ donors. If the black market isn’t safe for buying movies or getting music illegally, then it is definitely not safe for buying a kidney. This small statement in Satel’s essay provides a shocking emotional appeal to the readers. She brought up a great point that in most European countries, they practice “presumed consent” which is when “all citizens are considered donors at death unless they sign an anti-donor card”. In my opinion, I believe that it is harder to say no when the situation is right in front of you, than to say no when you are getting your license at sixteen years old. It is definitely easier to just pass by the opportunity to give life to someone else when the situation does not directly affect you. One of the most popular arguments against organ donation is that it is against the person’s religion. According to OrganDonor.gov, most religions encourage transplants because it is not only an “act of charity, fraternal love, and self sacrifice,” but also an act of giving. In the instance of The Greek Orthodox Church, they are “not opposed to organ donation as long as the organs and tissue in question are used to better human life. For example: transplantation or for research that will lead to improvements in the treatment and prevention of disease." The Greek Orthodox is among twenty-six other religions, including United Methodist, Mormons, Lutherans, Judaism, Islam, Catholicism, Buddhism, Baptist, Amish and The Christian Church that all believe organ donation is beneficial and at the same time, is encouraged. In her essay, Satel used emotional appeal to persuade her audience that everyone should be an organ donor. She added her own experience in the beginning that was both interesting and attention-grabbing, which made the essay much more personal to the reader. There was also a lot of shocking statistics that increased her argument to something stronger and more rational. She never criticized people that choose not to be organ donors, but instead made it clear that it would be an advantage to both the donor and recipient. She successfully gave counterarguments and was able to switch them around to something positive that helped support her argument. The one thing that dissagree with in this article was that she brought up a point hinting that sperm, egg and surrogate mothers were the same thing as donating organs. I do not believe this at all, because when someone gives sperm or an egg they are giving away a carbon copy of themselves for no reason other than to give another family a child. It is not a life or death situation like organ donation is and giving away copies of yourself has nothing to do with after-death procedures. That part of the essay should have been omitted because it is completely irrelevant and useless information. Satel also spent a lot of time on her personal story at the beginning. It was a nice start to her essay but it was a little bit too much and she should have had more information about why the opposing views are wrong as well as more benefits to donating organs. I agree completely with Satel’s reasoning that giving incentives would increase the total amount of donors and I believe that those measures should be taken as soon as possible. Innocent lives are being lost everyday just because there are not enough people in the United States that put “organ donor” on their driver’s licenses. Those two, very simple words can mean the world to someone on the waiting list, and there is no reason why everyone shouldn’t be a donor, especially with financial incentives.