Facebook feature spurs organ donor signups

Robin Roberts, host of “Good Morn­ing Amer­ica,” left, talks to Mark Zucker­berg, the founder and CEO of Face­book, dur­ing an inter­view in April in Menlo Park, Calif. Zucker­berg says U.S. and U.K. users will be able to enroll as organ donors via links on the world’s biggest social net­work­ing site. Zucker­berg says his friend­ship with Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs, who had received a liver trans­plant before he died last year, helped spur the idea. (Cour­tesy | ABC, Rick Rowell)

MIKE STOBBE

AP Med­ical Writer

ATLANTA — Thou­sands of Face­book users have signed up to be organ donors this week, thanks to a new fea­ture on the social net­work­ing site that makes it eas­ier to register.

The new option was announced Tues­day by Face­book CEO Mark Zucker­berg as a way to boost the num­ber of poten­tial organ donors. By the end of the day, 6,000 peo­ple had enrolled through 22 state reg­istries, accord­ing to Donate Life Amer­ica, which pro­motes dona­tions and is work­ing with Face­book. On a nor­mal day, those states together see less than 400 sign up.

The response “dwarfs any past organ dona­tion ini­tia­tive,” said David Flem­ing, chief exec­u­tive of Donate Life Amer­ica, in a statement.

The Face­book fea­ture allows users to share their deci­sion to be an organ donor on the web­site. More than 100,000 did that by Tues­day night, accord­ing to Face­book, which is work­ing with Fleming’s group to encour­age Face­book users to also offi­cially reg­is­ter as donors with their state.

A link on the site con­nects to online donor reg­istries. At least 22,000 peo­ple had fol­lowed that link as of Wednes­day after­noon. Infor­ma­tion from 22 states indi­cates that a third or more of them filled out the form to reg­is­ter, said Donate Life Amer­ica spokes­woman Aisha Michel.

Cal­i­for­nia — where Face­book is head­quar­tered — reported star­tling results. About 70 peo­ple reg­is­ter online as organ donors each day. But in the 24 hours after Zuckerberg’s announce­ment, about 3,900 signed up.

“We’re just thank­ful we have this oppor­tu­nity to bring more peo­ple into the process,” said Bryan Stew­art, a spokesman for OneL­e­gacy, which coor­di­nates trans­plants in the Los Ange­les area.

“We’re look­ing for­ward to see­ing how long this activ­ity lasts, and at what level,” he added.

Face­book, a social net­work site founded in 2004, has 526 mil­lion daily users around the world. It was Facebook’s idea to add the option, after Zucker­berg took a per­sonal inter­est in the issue, Michel said. The fea­ture is avail­able in the U.S. and the United Kingdom.

As with some per­sonal infor­ma­tion on Face­book, organ donor sta­tus can be kept pri­vate or shared pub­licly or only with friends.

More than 114,000 Amer­i­cans are cur­rently on wait­ing lists for trans­plants of kid­neys, liv­ers, hearts and other organs, accord­ing to United Net­work for Organ Shar­ing (UNOS), the orga­ni­za­tion that runs the nation’s trans­plant sys­tem. More than 6,600 died last year wait­ing for an organ.

Accord­ing to UNOS, 43 per­cent of adults in the U.S. are reg­is­tered as donors. Organs can only be used though under cer­tain cir­cum­stances, such as when some­one dies from a major head injury and a ven­ti­la­tor can keep the organs viable. Less than 1 per­cent of U.S. deaths annu­ally are under such cir­cum­stances. And some­times the oppor­tu­nity is lost because fam­ily mem­bers didn’t know about the person’s wishes on organ donation.

The Face­book fea­ture “is a unique oppor­tu­nity for peo­ple to make their deci­sion known,” UNOS Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Wal­ter Gra­ham, said on a statement.

Most peo­ple reg­is­ter as organ donors when they get a driver’s licenses, but about 2 per­cent sign up through online reg­istries. Both rep­re­sent legal con­sent for adults. For chil­dren who want to be donors, parental con­sent is still required.

Posted by AP News on May 2 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.