The Link Between Self-Driving Cars And Organ Donation

[hayleyrm]

I'm an organ donor and have been for many years now. As have all my friends and family. Registering as an organ donor, as far as I can tell, seems to be the done thing now - especially as policy change across the world gradually sees more national 'opt-out' organ donation models. I assumed shrinking transplant waiting lists. 

 

But then I came across this article: 

 

http://careers.imhgr...organ-donation/

 

While there are apparently more donors, according to this article there may well be fewer actual donations thanks to medical advancements. 

 

I guess my question is WHAT IS THE ANSWER? WHAT WILL BECOME OF US?

 

I'm just curious about where we're up to in terms of growing organs, prosthetics, life span, etc. Will the donor register become obsolete in the future? How do we manage this shortage?

 

Thoughts - in response to my questions, and miscellaneous - are muchly welcomed. 

 

Thanks in advance! 

 

[CraigD]

Welcome to hypography, hayleyrm! :) Please feel free to start a topic in the introductions forum to tell us something about yourself.

 

I'm an organ donor and have been for many years now. As have all my friends and family. Registering as an organ donor, as far as I can tell, seems to be the done thing now - especially as policy change across the world gradually sees more national 'opt-out' organ donation models. I assumed shrinking transplant waiting lists.

 

But then I came across this article:

The Link Between Self-Driving Cars And Organ Donation

 

While there are apparently more donors, according to this article there may well be fewer actual donations thanks to medical advancements

It’s not advances in medicine that reduce the number of accident victims available for organ harvesting, but reduced numbers of fatal car accidents – in this case, because of self-driving cars, which are less likely to have fatal accidents than human-driven ones.

 

Self-driving vehicles are just the latest improvement in car safety, seat belts, crumble zones and air bags being some major previous ones. I think this advance may have a greater impact on the supply of transplant organs from accident victims than previous ones, because while all previous improvements reduced the fatality to population ratio by a factor of about 2, mandatory self-driving cars might reduced it to nearly zero.

 

I guess my question is WHAT IS THE ANSWER? WHAT WILL BECOME OF US?

I hope that advances in medicine, especially the analysis and alteration of genes, results in diseases that currently require organ transplants being effectively managed or cured before they damage these organs. Perhaps a decade from now, organ transplants will seem as primitive as 19th century amputations to treat gangrene in injured limbs seem to us now.

 

Sources: Wikipedia article “List of motor vehicle deaths in U.S. by year”, “Seat belt”, “Gangrene”