Article January 1, 2001 Issue

Should I be an organ donor?

by Douglas Simmons—Melrose, Massachusetts, USA

At a high school meeting this year, two of my friends were talking about their driving permits. On the form for the permit it asks whether or not you would like to become an organ donor. In the United States you may choose to sign a consent form so that, when you die, hospitals are allowed to harvest your vital organ tissue or bone marrow for transplantation, therapy, research, or education. My friends were discussing how they wanted to be donors, but they couldn't because they were not 18 years old yet. They asked me whether I was one or not, and I answered that I wasn't. Then they asked, "Is that because of your religion?" And I said, "Yeah, I guess."

But then I thought, "Why am I not an organ donor? Should I be an organ donor?" I brought the question up in my Sunday School class one evening and my teacher answered that Christian Science did not directly state anything one way or another. She said it was really up to the individual.

I wanted to pray for my own answer. I wasn't doing this to explain it to my friends, I was doing it for myself. Lots of questions started running through my mind, such as, "Is this the way that God wants me to help people, or is there a different way?"

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