On the morning news, which I watch while getting dressed, there was an item about a teenager with cancer who, as her last act, donated her corneas to her mother, who herself was losing her sight. That was touching, but it got me thinking. Are religious people less likely to donate their organs after death than are atheists?
I can’t be “arsed” (to use a Cunk-ism) to spend a lot of time looking for data to answer this question, but two sites (Wikipedia and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services) suggest that the policy of many churches is in fact to encourage organ donation. Wikipedia, for instance, says this:
All major religions either accept organ donation or accept the right of individual members to make their own decision. Most religions like the Roman Catholic Church are in favour of organ donation as acts of charity and as a means of saving a life. Jains, who regard compassion to be a main principle of their faith, donate organs pro-actively. Some impose certain restrictions. For example, Jehovah’s Witnesses require that organs be drained of any blood due to their interpretation of the disallowance of blood transfusion from the Bible and Muslims require that the donor have provided written consent in advance.Orthodox Judaism considers it obligatory if it will save a life, as long as the donor is considered dead as defined by Jewish law, which is a matter of debate among different rabbis. A few groups disfavor organ transplantation or donation; notably, these include Shinto[4] and those who follow the folk customs of the Gypsies.
They don’t mention faith-healing sects like Christian Science or many of the marginal fundamentalist Protestant sects that believe in faith-healing, but this is in general good news. And, frankly, it didn’t surprise me, for religions do officially encourage charity, and it would be a nasty religion that explicitly forbids organ donation.
I wondered about this because it seems that whether or not you give up part of your body depends on how you conceive you’ll return in the afterlife. If you need all your organs up in Heaven, and your Earthly organs are transmuted into heavenly ones, then you won’t do too well without your corneas (but of course God is powerful enough to fix that.) For an explicit statement of how a church’s view of the afterlife affects its view of organ donation, here’s one church’s policy (from Wikipedia; my emphasis):
Southern Baptist Convention
In 1988, the Southern Baptist Convention resolved that because “resurrection does not depend on body wholeness” and that “organ transplant technology has transformed many lives from certain death to vibrant productivity,” the SBC encourages “voluntarism regarding organ donations in the spirit of stewardship, compassion for the needs of others, and alleviating suffering.” (Resolution on Human Organ Donations, June, 1988)
I’m an organ donor, of course, but when I was a mildly religious child and hadn’t put away my childish things, I always thought that if I died I’d go to heaven with whatever body I died with. And had anyone asked, I would have hesitated to allow my organs to be given to others.
But official church policy isn’t the end of the matter. As we all know from the behavior of Roman Catholics, many church members regularly violate Church policy on matters of birth control, premarital sex, and so on. So it’s possible that many religionists, confused about how they’ll appear in the afterlife, may not want to donate their organs for fear of living for eternity without some organs. Remember, many believers haven’t thought deeply about what form they’ll assume in Heaven (what age will they be, for instance?), and so may simply take the default option of “I want to be whole.”
So, regardless of church policy, I’m wondering if believers themselves are less likely to be organ donors than atheists, who don’t accept an afterlife. I don’t know the data, but perhaps some religious person can answer.
And that question led to another: are believers less likely to be cremated than are atheists? I know that, given what we know about bodies, this question doesn’t make a lot of sense, but then religious belief often doesn’t make a lot of sense. Maybe you’d come back as a cinder!
No, organs remain and are maintained as long as their pipes are resonant. (Please forgive me.)… 😉
Sub
I’ve noticed that both christians and atheists want to be buried, but those people who are okay with cremation are always atheists. This is just anecdotal evidence and could be wrong.
Having said that, for centuries it was illegal to dig up bodies for anatomy, precisely because the body as a whole was necessary for resurrection. The corpse on the famous painting ‘The anatomy of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp’ by Rembrandt was executed for armed robbery. Criminals wouldn’t be resurrected anyway, so it was okay to use them for scientific purposes.
*the anatomy lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp. Not the anatomy of the good doctor himself ofcourse.
I am going to politely disagree. My grandfather was a staunch RC but was greatly relieved when the church changed its attitude on cremation and allowed it. But then, he had seen too many people buried alive on the Somme in 1916.
The First World War changed the policies of many religions on burial etc, and is why many have the more enlightened policies Jerry outlines above.
Many choose cremation simply because it is much cheaper – they can’t afford to be buried.
Historically, when corpses were taken for use in anatomy classes, they were always stripped naked. It was not illegal to steal a dead body, because it did not belong to anybody. However, it was illegal to steal the clothes, which belonged to whoever inherited the person’s effects.
Some corpses, such as hanged criminals, were provided to anatomy schools for free, but the demand far outweighed the supply, and they would buy bodies from the “resurrectionists” no questions asked. It wasn’t a job you wanted others to know you did though, even if a loophole in the law meant it wasn’t strictly illegal.
The above basically applies to Protestant England, especially the 18th and 19th centuries. I think the situation was similar in America, but I don’t know much American history.
In the Catholic world, the 1215 Lateran Council made anatomy illegal. I’m not sure when they began to permit it, but it was well after it was permitted in the Protestant world.
I like the idea of the Urban death project:
http://www.urbandeathproject.org
I’m not so sure that was the reasoning, but, rather that cutting up the body was frequently part of the punishment (e.g., hang, drawing, and quartering with the resulting parts publicly displayed). To do that to someone not judicially sentenced was to punish someone illegally.
Note that executed criminals usually were given last rites so were generally considered potentially/probably saved.
BTW as far as cremation remember that that is the highly preferred method in Hinduism.
I know and have known many devout Christians (including my parents) who favor cremation.
Maybe 5yrs ago I reconnected with an old highschool friend (not GF)on Facebook. She was then bright, Nat’l Honor Soc, etc, but had devolved into a foaming religious loon, Tea-bagger (and proud of it), and homeopathic medicine tout. I think most all her other friends had blocked her, but I didn’t block or unfriend her because I still remembered the bright, intelligent girl from 40-some yrs back, and also felt that if I did, she would have won, and just pushed back in comments from time to time. (She finally unfriended me.)
Anyway, one of her other crusades was against organ donation, for reasons I never fully fathomed, but they seemed to be based on reports that somehow neurologically-flatlined people still feel pain.
That reminds me of the Doctor Who episodes Dark Water and Death in Heaven where the Master and Cybermen are running some scam to make people think that the departed were conscious. It turned out the Master was just using dead bodies to turn into Cybermen (the plot was a bit weird I thought) but I loved the dialogue where a “doctor” is demonstrating that the dead remain conscious by letting the Doctor and Clara listen to a voice saying “Don’t cremate me. Don’t cremate me!”
This bit of the dialogue is great:
Doctor Chang: Over time Dr. Skarosa became convinced these were the voices of the recently departed. He believed it was a telepathic communication from the dead.
The Doctor: Why? Was he an idiot?
Oh how I love the new Doctor!
I need to catch up on Dr. Who.
But this reminds me of a different (but true) condition which is seen in Cotard’s syndrome. I read about it in Life Ascending by Nick Lane, which is on the 10 great events in evolution. Anyway, in this syndrome a person has lost all emotional connections to people and their surroundings. As a result they become convinced that they are actually dead — an animated corpse — and they claim that they can smell their own rotting flesh.
Yes and they keep trying to get people to bury them. It must be an awful feeling. I wonder what causes it. Is it a loss of the assemblage of the self?
I think the ever fascinating V.S. Ramachandran has something to say on this. On the BBC Reith lectures, if memory serves. x
Why hasn’t that been used in CSI??
“The Doctor: Why? Was he an idiot?”
I haven’t been keeping up with the Doctor, but that must have been Peter Capaldi. I can just ‘hear’ his voice saying it. 😉
Yep Capaldi.
Except Clara’s Danny died, and didn’t come back, and I liked him, and I wanted them to live happily ever after. 🙁
Yeah but she saw that distant relative of Danny’s so something is up with that.
Oh and I love that Danny died such a mundane death (at least the first time) by being hit by a car suddenly. In a show like Doctor Who where things are so fanciful, Danny Pink is hot by an ordinary car and his body harvested like any other ordinary person
Going by Wikipedia for International Organ Donors and belief in god (for Europe and USA) it appears that the more religious countries appear higher in the number of deceased donors.
The same thing could be done with the different US states and the first link. I think (based on the last 10 minutes of googling) how easy it is to sign-up for donating organs apply more than personal beliefs. Something interesting is happening in Vermont for it to only have a 5% organ donation rate.
Sorry, I must have misspelled the linking spell above… International organ donors.
Interesting that of the top ten countries (by donor rate), the US is the only opt-in country.
I cannot say anything of value about other religion, but what you quoted about Judaism is simplistic at best.
Donations from a live person, which don’t seriously risk the donor (like kidneys or part of a liver) are encouraged by nearly all significant rabbis.
There’s a whole range of opinions about donations from the dead or which create significant risk (lung).
For a perfect expression of the instinctive unease superstitious people feel when it comes to organ donation you could do worse than search YT for ‘The Ricky Gervais Show – Blind Ghost’.
Karl Pilkington is the everyman who holds back from donating organs, and I reckon the reasons he gives in the clip are shared at an intuitive, irrational level by most people.
I’ve never given thought to how my ghost will appear. I thought about how my zombieself will appear if they ever were to come back. I suppose dressing up like a clown before I die will sought out both of these issues.
Not sure this is the correct place to ask the questions since most of us are Atheist or close to it. Aside from taking a proper survey on it for both donation and cremation most of us can only provide sketchy individual examples.
My mother died just a few years ago and she was cremated and no religious service or otherwise was done. Donation was not considered as she was old and in very bad health.
It was done this way because this is what both my parents requested. My mother was not an atheist but religion had no importance to her and Dad is pretty much, Atheist.
I know that religious people go out and buy plots in cemeteries, prepay for head stones and caskets and all sorts of thing. My wife and I prepaid to a funeral home to handle the cremations and we both donate whatever is still useful depending on useful any of it might be.
The best way to get an honest survey or accounting on this would be to ask people what they have laid out in their wills. If they have nothing then I would not use them in the survey.
Careful, or you’ll go to heaven like this.
Oooh — cool! If I wind up in the Christian Heaven, I so want to be one of the headless ones!
b&
“Can’t be arsed” is a very common British turn of phrase, not readily adoptable by the Americans I would think. “Can’t be assed” would sound very peculiar! We also have “arsing around”, to describe behaviour that is lazy or inappropriately unserious.
You always know when you’re talking to an American or Brit on Twi**er by whether they say “arse” or “ass”.
Not necessarily. Some phrases lend themselves better to the British variation. “I can’t be arsed to get out of bed” scans much better than, “I can’t be assed to get out of bed.” But, on the other hand, “He’s such an ass” works better than, “He’s such an arse.” Gripping hand, “He’s such an arsehole” might work….
b&
I read recently that, while the Catholic Church generally is fine with donation, the Pope isn’t allowed to donate organs. Can’t remember why, though.
I read that the Pope’s organs cannot be donated because Catholic Church tradition and doctrine requires the Pope’s body to be buried intact. (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/the-pope/8303510/The-Pope-is-an-organ-donor-but-his-body-parts-cannot-be-donated.html) But this applies only to the Pope. Pope Benedict XVI was a card carrying organ donor while he was a Cardinal. The card became invalid after he became Pope.
Now that Benedict has de-poped, I wonder if that still applies?
Since he resigned and was not removed he is still a Pope in good standing. I suspect that the rule still applies. I suspect when he dies he will be given a Pope’s funeral. But it would be interesting to pose this question to someone at the Vatican and get an official response.
Old Christian tradition of digging up ‘holy men’ at intervals in order to proclaim that they’re perfectly preserved and therefore a saint (and grab a few relics while you’re at it). It’s a matter of turning cadavers into prestige and portable wealth. To start pillaging organs before the body’s even cold would look like a lack of faith.
A tradition borrowed by some secular or parareligious traditions too – Communists and the weird tradition with the remains of Jeremy Bentham (!).
There is a fear promoted among the rabidly prolife set that if you are an organ donor, doctors won’t try as hard to save you, because they want your organs for other patients.
I’m an atheist and intend for my corpse to be used for science.
Please let someone have your useful organs first!
In 1994, not a long time after I spent several months living in Italy (and especially Sicily), a young American boy named Nicholas Green was murdered by road bandits in Calabria (the “boot” of Italy…the area around Reggio Calabria is run by the ‘ndrangheta, generally considered among the most powerful, and certainly the most ruthless, criminal syndicates on the planet.)
At the time, his parents created quite a stir in the Italian press by donating the boy’s organs at the Italian hospital where he died, across the strait of Messina from Reggio Calabria in Messina, Sicily.
The Italian press undertook quite a public shaming of the Italian population, pointing out the extremely low level of organ donation among Italians, and how macabre it was for an example to be set by two American parents whose child had just been murdered BY Italians. The press called upon all Italians to become organ donors, apparently with some success. Read here about “the Nicholas effect”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Green
A remarkable story this week about organ donation in Britain. This brought tears to my eyes when I read it. You can’t help but admire the paediatric consultant Richard Hain and the beautiful altruism of the parents. And to thank goodness for the benefits of medical science. I don’t care that the poor parents were Christian: I can only admire and sympathize with them. x
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/26/teddy-houlston-valuable-life-organ-donation
This was indeed a remarkable story. But then I think that all transplant stories are remarkable. My wife had three organ transplants between 1992 and 2003. Two kidneys and one pancreas. We have been active ever since the first one in the local branch of an international organization that serves as a support group for transplant recipients. Every month the local group of recipients meets. Each and every one of them has a remarkable story to tell. I have heard hundreds of transplant stories firsthand in the past 23 years. Everyone of them has been a remarkable, amazing story of courage, compassion, sacrifice and perseverance exhibited by recipients and donors.
Jerry, I can tell you from experience. I have been building cremation machines for the last three years. And in that three years I have seen all walks of life being cremated. I have seen every culture and every religion using the cremation method of sending their loved to nowhere land. There are different ceremonies for each religion (I’ve seen Hindus burning their loved ones with money and other non-explosive items). But for the most part all religions use cremation.
There is some research indicating that religious attitudes and beliefs do cause some people to avoid becoming organ donors. I recently read an article in the journal Nephrology Dialysis Transplantation that presented an overview of how organ donation and transplantation is viewed in the major religions and some of the larger minor religions. The authors were a group of nephrologists who wrote the article following an issue that arose with one of their patients. The article provides an overview of how organ donation and transplantation is viewed in Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Mormonism, Jehovahs Witness, Christian Science, Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Shintoism and Taoism. Here is the link http://ndt.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2010/10/20/ndt.gfq628.full.pdf
My personal experience has been that most christian denominations do not have issues with organ donation and transplantation. My wife received three organ transplants in the past 23 years: two kidneys and one pancreas. (Unfortunately, none of them are working any longer. She is now on dialysis.) Both kidneys were donated by a living relative. The first from her brother and the second from her niece, the daughter of the brother who donated the kidney to his sister, my wife. The pancreas came from a deceased non-relative. Her brother and and his daughter are both deeply devout Christians.
Another of my wife’s brothers had a kidney transplant about two years ago. His kidney was donated by his daughter, who also is a very devout Christian.
My wife and I are active in the local chapter of the Transplant Recipients International Organization (T.R.I.O.), a support group for transplant recipients. There are nearly twenty members of our local group in the Akron-Canton area of Ohio. All the transplant recipients in this group are christians. (I am, as far as I know, the only atheist active in this group.) Each year we have a donor-recipient celebration party during which we typically have a family member of a deceased donor speak to our group. All of the donors of whom I have heard of and/or met were themselves believers.
We have one member, the wife of a now deceased member who was a kidney recipient, who convinced the rabbi at her temple about 7 years ago to hold a special sabbath service for organ transplant recipients. This service is now held annually. Recipients attend the service and are presented to the temple’s congregation.
I acknowledge that all I have presented here is anecdotal. But I have had 23 years of interaction with hundreds of transplant recipients and some members of donor families. I have not once heard any religious objections toward organ donation and transplantation expressed.
I must admit I’m quite surprised (pleasantly so) that so many religions are so enlightened, in this respect at least. It’s not something I would have expected.
I’ve been an “any organ” donor for 30 years. It’s on my driver’s license.
My wife and family are too and know that I am.
When I got my drivers license in B.C in the mid-80s, I asked “who wouldn’t be an organ donor?” The examiner said Asians usually don’t. Thinking back, I find that a bit odd since I think it’s only the bones that Asian religions consider sacred.
I belonged to a Roman C. group for 35 years –Arautos do evangelho (Heralds of the gospel)– copy of the beter known Opus Dei. Not even blood donation was done, although they do when a member of the sect needs it. “Imagine that blood helps a ‘son of the darkness'” was the argument they usually give to the veteran members to avoid donations.
This to show how religious sects usually have “initiated truth’s”, and it depends on the fundamentalist believe they have on sin, heaven, etc. But they are sensible to the public opinion, and need to hide as much as posible what may get disadvantages in any field (donations, influence etc).
The reference to Shinto is interesting – you hardly hear anything about it.
Do the Japanese follow their (state theocratic) tradition here, or is it just the remaining clergy?