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?

  • n0x0n@feddit.de
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    120
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    1 year ago

    You’ve got 2 kidneys. You generously give one to someone in need.

    You have 1 kidney. You now have a single point of failure, where you had redundancy before.

    IT guy here, just in case that might have gibt unnoticed.

      • Klear@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        25
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        If I ever end up in a coma with little hope of recovery, I want them to unplug me. And then plug me back again.

    • zeus ⁧ ⁧ ∽↯∼@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      15
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      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 ↩︎

    • Kerfuffle@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      8
      ·
      1 year ago

      You now have a single point of failure, where you had redundancy before.

      On the plus side, someone else gets to continue existing.

      Or from the IT perspective: I have two important servers, one has a single drive, the other has RAID mirroring. The drive in the first server fails. I could take a drive out of the server with RAID and have two functional servers or I could keep the second one running on its RAID and have a server with redundancy (that hopefully/might not be needed).

      (I’m not going out and donating a kidney though, guess we can say it’s because I’m selfish.)

      • Mnemnosyne@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        But as OP points out, someone will get that kidney eventually anyway. So the difference is that a different someone else gets to continue existing.

        • Kerfuffle@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          1 year ago

          But as OP points out, someone will get that kidney eventually anyway.

          OP erroneously thought that but it’s not actually correct. The conditions where someone dies but their kidney is viable for a transplant are rare.

      • Archpawn@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Counterpoint: If you’re an IT guy, you’re probably making enough money that you can donate mosquito nets and save tons of lives, and it’s not worth risking all that to save one more.