Organ donor? I’ll donate a kidney or some bone marrow to a love one, putting the words “Organ Donor” on my drivers license I need to pray on that.
Jack Lynch of Gift of Hope Organ and Tissue Donor Network appeared on the Tom Joyner Morning Show in an interview with Roland Martin Monday (5/4), morning. The jest of the interview was to encourage African Americans to become organ donors. This interview caught my attention because of what Lynch DID NOT say was one of the reasons why African Americans do not become organ donors.
One of the main reasons African Americans don’t become organ donors is the fear that inequities would cause their organs to be unjustly harvest. Most Blacks that I talk with think it is within the realms of possibility that their death would be “confirmed” more quickly in order for their organs to be harvest, particularly those African Americans on the lower end of the socio-economic scale. This distrust Blacks have with the healthcare system has been ingrained by decades of injustices. Look at the Tuskegee Study, the forty years between 1932 and 1972, the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) conducted an experiment on 399 black men in the late stages of syphilis. These men, for the most part illiterate sharecroppers from one of the poorest counties in Alabama, were never told what disease they were suffering from or of its seriousness. Informed that they were being treated for “bad blood,” their doctors had no intention of curing them of syphilis at all. Needless to say, 1972 was not that long ago. [Click here to see more details on the Tuskegee Study.]
According to the 2000 census, for many health conditions, non-Hispanic blacks bear a disproportionate burden of disease, injury, death, and disability. Why is this? There are a myriad of reasons why this disparity exists, socio-economic, environmental, and access to healthcare services, just to name a few. However right or wrong, the reality of this disparity of African American health conditions also contributes to Blacks’ distrust of the healthcare system. In order to encourage more Blacks to become organ donors, this mistrust issue must be addressed and not swept under the rug. [Click here to read entire CDC article about the health disparities experienced by Blacks.]
If you’re not an organ donor and would like to become one, talk with your team, including Michael Jordan (your physician), let them know your wishes. Also check out Gift of Hope’s website, www.giftofhope.org, they have some good information there.
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