Gwendolyn Sobkowiak | staff writer

There are two things that I can distinctly remember about the day that I got my driver’s license. One, that no one told me I was allowed to smile for the picture, which provided me with a flattering, but ultimately unhappy portrait to carry in my pocket, and two, that I gained physical documentation of my status as an organ donor.

In 2025, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services published an updated National Survey of Organ Donation Attitudes and Practices. They surveyed 10,008 U.S. adults on their thoughts on organ, eye and tissue donation. A jaw dropping 93% of respondents said they supported organ donation.

Despite this, the actual rates of people registered in the U.S. is shockingly low in comparison. While it varies across the country, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT), reports that only around 47.7 percent of current drivers license and identification card holders are registered as organ donors. That statistic is staggeringly low compared to our initial 93% of supporting respondents.

Why does such a disparity exist between people who support organ donation and those that make that commitment?

Well, maybe, because from a conceptual perspective, organ donation is horrifying.

Organ donation, put simply, involves organs being taken from our dead bodies, and placed carefully in someone else’s. While that’s all well and good in a hypothetical sense, it feels a lot easier to digest when it involves made-up people that we don’t really know. Few people like to think about blood, guts and scalpels. And even fewer can tolerate the idea of their organs being removed and rehoused in another body.  

Organ donation is a modern day nightmare if you think about it too long. A Frankensteining of the human body, imagined on our own flesh. To be an organ donor you have to accept that you’re going to die, and that once that happens, a doctor is probably going to cut you up, and parcel away what physically remains of you.  

Forgive my disgusting description, but I believe it’s important to acknowledge the grotesque nature of it all. Otherwise, I’m not really addressing the concerns of those among us who haven’t yet checked the box.

Sometimes I like to think of myself, privately, in my own childish, desperate way, as immortal. Or at least not bound by death and its ever-ticking clock. I like to consider my life and my body as immutably young, healthy and continuous. But that’s not really something I base my major life decisions off of. It’s a coping method to deal with the horror of this short existence, not a founding point for me to avoid discomfort. The truth is that I, just like everyone else, will die. And there’s nothing that I can do about it.

With that in mind, I need to be realistic about my remains. My body will outlast my consciousness, so I want to make the decision on what happens to it now, while I’m still able to.

According to the U.S. Health Resources & Services Administration (HRSA), 109,817 people are currently on the national transplant waiting list. HRSA’s website reports that a single organ donor can save eight lives and enhance over 75 more.

I prefer to focus on the hypothetical father who’d be receiving my liver, the guy who’d get to spend another 30 years with his family. Or the young woman in need of a heart transplant who gets to go on to finish her medical degree. I like to think about those lasting impacts, not the minutiae of a procedure I won’t even feel.

Another concern that I’ve heard expressed about organ donation has to do with a mistrust of the medical system. Organ donation isn’t always happening when a person peacefully passes away at 100 years old. What people more often associate it with is following fatal accidents like car crashes. It’s printed on our driver’s licenses after all. Is it any wonder that we’re scared someone might just decide our bloody remains aren’t worth salvaging when there’s a little 8-year-old tucked up in a hospital bed waiting for a heart. Organ donation can be scary. People want to feel like they’ll be cared for in situations they already fear.

No one wants to lower their chances of being saved. But the truth is that’s a misunderstanding of emergency medical care. First responders aren’t looking for organ donors on the side of the highway in hopes of saving another patient; to do so would violate the Hippocratic Oath. According to Mid-America Transplant, a non-profit organ donation service, sensationalized headlines are largely to blame for this anxiety.

“The reality of the healthcare and transplantation system makes ‘stealing’ an organ practically impossible due to a series of strict legal, ethical and structural boundaries,” according to Mid-America Transplant blog post from 2023 entitled, “Will I Be Saved if I’m an Organ and Tissue Donor?”

Talking to my family members who work as first responders, they were horrified to hear that people held this belief. People don’t get into emergency medical services to pick and choose who dies. They do so out of a desire to save lives. Plus, as I learned the other day while on shift at UPMC Mercy hospital, emergency medical technicians don’t even check for an organ donation card until after a patient is medically considered dead.

Organ donation can feel like a bunch of vultures waiting around for us to kick the bucket. It’s anxiety -inducing to consider. We aren’t really sure what happens to us after we die, and the image of us being dismantled and reassembled into someone else is kind of horrific in principle.

We want ownership over the body, and we might even have a sentimental attachment to our organs. After all, death is scary. But we can’t take any of this stuff with us when we pass.

Acknowledging organ donation requires us to acknowledge that we too are going to die, and following our deaths, we will have little say in what happens to our physical forms. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take a moment to reflect on our values. As caring, loving members of society, we should be brave enough to have an impact.

If 93% of us really do believe in the value of organ donation, then maybe more of us should check that box. Then, we could all be proud that we carry our hearts on our cards.

Gwendolyn Sobkowiak can be reached at sobkowiakg@duq.edu