The audience for my essay is people on the fence about becoming an organ donor. Preferably older than 18 years old because that is the age at which one has the right to become an organ donor. People that fit into this category would also have to have healthy bodies. People reading this essay would be of either gender or race. Organ donation is permitted in almost all major religions so a person of any faith would be able to read this essay. People against organ donation would be a main reader of this essay.
Studies show that more than 100,000 people are on the waiting list for a major organ and roughly 4,000 are added to this list every day. Also more than 6,500 people a year or about 18 people a day die before an organ ever becomes available to them. Due to not getting the organs people need; a person dies every 15 hours. More people should become an organ donor because it is possible to donate while still being healthy, a donor's body is never disfigured, and it can save many lives.
In the science world organ donations is a fairly new topic. Alexander Capron writes a book based upon the benefits of having a global kidney transplant market. In this book, he says that, "The first successful legitimate organ transplant was done in 1954 at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston by Peter Medawar" (Capron, 30). From 1954 to 1973 there were 10,000 successful kidney transplants done in the United States. Alida Liberman wrote an article that aims to understand how an organ transplant occurs. He states that the most common transplant is the kidney transplant. The least common single organ transplant is the intestine transplant (Liberman, 139). Most of the organs that get donated come from patients who are already deceased. The recipients of these organs are between 50 and 64 years old but there are many cases of people much younger than that receiving organ or in other words kidney transplants come from loved ones.
