April is National Donate Life Month, the one time of year you have even less reason to not be an organ donor. Seriously, click right here, enter your information, and you’re done. That’s it. For the rest of your natural days, every April, or anytime someone suggests you should be an organ donor, you can sit back, put your hands behind your head, and smugly reply, “I already am.” More importantly, you can lord the fact that you are a donor over the heads of everyone who isn’t. And who doesn’t love being better than everyone else?
Obviously this issue is pretty close to my heart — my lungs, to be specific. If it wasn’t for my mysterious and magnanimous donor, I would be dead. But there are a lot of people out there who aren’t as lucky as me. Every day, 22 people die waiting for organ donations, because the demand is significantly higher than the supply.
If you are even passingly familiar with the vast, teeming horde of humanity covering this planet, you probably realize that those numbers don’t add up. The supply of organs should breathtakingly outstrip demand, but that, sadly, is not the case, because people are stupid and selfish. Guys, I hate to break it to you, but once you’re dead, you don’t need your insides anymore.
But someone else does.
Signing up takes, literally, a minute, and you can save 75 lives later. The benefit-cost ratio on that is astoundingly in your favor. I mean, I’m an organ donor, and I’m like 60% disease. My eyes are crap, my lungs aren’t even my own, my pancreas is garbage, my liver and kidneys are being chewed up by anti-rejection drugs, I’m pretty sure my intestines are a hot mess, but, whatever, there’s still at least a couple dozen other organs in there that someone might need.
Again, if you’re too lazy to scroll back up, here is the link to sign up to be a donor: https://www.donatelife.net/register
This could not be any easier.
If nothing else, always remember: Even an asshole can save a life.