Organ donation can be a charitable act to help others in need.

Gift of Life has received many awards over the years and, in fact, for the last eight years Gift of Life has been No. 1 in the nation and practically the world for procuring donations of organs and tissues.

Now, the organ/tissue procurement industry has convinced the Pennsylvania General Assembly to vote on a bill (HB 30) to drastically revise the rules under which it can acquire your family’s organs and tissues.

The changes the Legislature is set to approve, unless amendments are accepted, will eliminate a family’s right to have any say over what happens when their loved one dies.

A minor when getting a driver’s permit will be able to say yes to organ donation.

There is no provision to get true informed consent to these medical procedures which can begin before your child, your loved ones are pronounced dead and will override any wishes you may have regarding end-of-life care if it interferes with the ability to maximize the number of organs that may be viable after removal.

The bill will mandate that from a very young age your child will be taught in school that organ/tissue donation is great and will enhance their life expectancy, that minorities are ineligible to receive donated organs from white individuals, that taking prisoners organs could be a good substitute for the death penalty and that parents have no right to override the child’s decision on donation. (HB 30 and SB 180 at Section 8628, IU13 Curriculum, The Decision of a Lifetime OTDA Classroom Toolkit Organ and Tissue Awareness Project).

The legislation will override any investigations into the cause and manner of violent or suspicious deaths by coroners, thus drastically impacting the ability to gather bodily evidence in the case of homicide or other wrongful death.

If the evidence hasn’t been properly investigated in drug deaths, sufficient to meet the demands of the judicial system, the ability to prosecute drug dealers will be severely impacted.

You can’t convict persons without evidence and without the evidence the alleged perpetrator will not likely enter into a plea deal.

Coroners are being defamed by the organ/tissue industry by their suggestions that some coroners are simply denying all donations. First, if the family wishes to donate, the coroner will do all he/she can to facilitate the possibility if it will not compromise the investigation.

Second, some of the denials cited by the donation industry simply are not complete denials, but are a partial authorization after autopsy.

And, when listing denials of eight in one county and eight in another county, there is a failure to note that during that time frame those eight investigations were out of a total of 7,010 death reviews.

And, in the other county with eight denials, it failed to be mentioned that county authorized 274 donations during the same time frame.

Overall, the number of coroner/medical examiner denials represent 0.0005 percent of donations.

It may be asked why the emphasis is being placed on the few denials and not providing a complete and truthful overview with the number of authorizations?

The answer may be quite simple, the organs in an individual’s body are currently worth nearly $750,000 in fees to the organ/tissue industry.

And it doesn’t matter, if the organ is medically suitable for transplant, they still get a fee.

This amount does not include the millions of dollars received for the sale of skin and bone to for profit companies who make cosmetics, wrinkle creams, penile implants and more.

And it doesn’t matter, if the tissue is medically suitable for use, the purchaser of these products is never informed that they are receiving matter from a deceased person who may have had medical diagnoses.

Would you want an organ or tissue which came from a person with a drug addiction, with hepatitis C, with cancer, with rabies? Probably not, if you knew. You will probably not be told.

And people have died from those diseases which were transmitted from a medically unsuitable organ/tissue.

Also, if this bill passes, families will receive no compensation, such as payment of funeral expenses.

They will receive a sympathy card and be recognized as a donor family.

And if your loved one is taken to Philadelphia or Pittsburgh for harvesting, there is no consideration given as to when you might wish to commemorate the deceased’s life with a funeral service. You may wait days before being informed you may go to Pittsburgh or Philadelphia to bring your loved one home.

Let’s understand all the facts before the statement that death investigations are irrelevant.

An accurate determination of the cause and manner of death is important in medical malpractice cases, vehicular accident cases, LODD (line of duty deaths for fireman, police, first responders), inheritance cases and workers compensation cases.

The one person ignored in this process, the one person who is marginalized, exploited and who gets nothing is the organ donor, whom we call a beating heart cadaver.

Everyone else ostensibly profits well from organ donation.

The CEO’s basic salary for operating a supposedly non-profit may be as high as $400,000-$500,000 annually. That does not include any benefit package or bonuses.

Organ/tissue donation is a multi-billion dollar industry to those who harvest the organs and sell the tissue for use as cosmetic implants, penile implants, Botox, mesh implants, wrinkle creams and the like.

Tissues used for wound healing are sold to doctors at approximately $1,000 per 2 inches.

In purchasing these items you are buying the donations of others. The donations which are freely given are sold to consumers at an enormous profit.

Passage of such legislation will benefit the company winners and increasingly take rights away from the people who donate the essential components, the organs/tissues.

The donors get nothing and we disenfranchise them and exploit them.

And we pervert and jeopardize the justice system so that no one pays for the wrongful taking of their life.

Families deserve closure when their loved one dies of unknown and possibly criminal acts. Justice should be for all, not just a few, and we shouldn’t lose our humanity in providing it.

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Editor’s note: Susan M. Shanaman is the legislative liaison for the Pennsylvania State Coroners Association.