Yale Bulletin and Calendar

April 6, 2007|Volume 35, Number 24

'Donate Life Week' seeks to raise
awareness for organ donation

The Yale chapter of the national organization Students for Organ Donation (SOD) will host several events in conjunction with "Donate Life Week" April 9-12.

Donate Life Week is a one-week long organ donor awareness campaign to be held simultaneously at SOD chapters throughout the country. The goal is to reach one million college students nationwide. SOD has chapters at 120 colleges and universities and 41 high schools, with a membership of over 1,000.

Yale's events will begin with a screening of the film "John Q," about a down-on-his-luck father who fights to see his son receive a life-saving heart transplant. The screening is on Monday, April 9, at 7 p.m. in Rm. 101 of Linsly-Chittenden Hall (LC), 63 High St.

On Wednesday, April 11, there will be a panel discussion featuring an organ donor recipient and an organ transplant surgeon, who will discuss the real-world aspect of organ donation. This event will take place at 7 p.m. in Rm. 208 of William L. Harkness Hall, 100 Wall St.

A group of religious leaders from the community who represent Christian, Islamic, Judaic and Buddhist traditions will discuss the relevance of organ donation to their faiths in a panel discussion on Thursday, April 12, at 7 p.m. in Rm. 102 LC. They will explore such issues as how to reconcile faith and organ donation -- a controversial subject for many individuals.

According to SOD, three Americans die every 80 minutes while waiting for an organ. Some 7,000 Americans die every year waiting for an organ. Yet, only three out of 10 Americans are registered as organ donors.

The Yale chapter of SOD hopes its events will help to separate myth from reality on the subject of organ donation and to help save the lives of those who are in need of transplants.

"One might wonder why a group of college students is adopting the cause of organ donation," says an SOD press release on Donate Life Week. "We realize that we are the future of this nation and thus have two options at hand: 1) passively accept what is handed to us by our current leaders or 2) take an active role in shaping the future we will inherit. We choose the latter; by taking action now we stand a chance at ending one crisis gripping our nation today and hope that our generation and those that come after us, i.e. our children and grandchildren, need not face the same challenges we face today."

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Two Yale researchers receive Donaghue Investigator Awards

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'Donate Life Week' seeks to raise awareness for organ donation

In Memoriam: Sebastian Konstantinovich Shaumyan

Yale Books in Brief

Campus Notes