A Different Donation Appeal

By Bees | October 26, 2024

Save the Life of Someone You Will Never Meet

Phil Lesh, bassist of iconic San Francisco bands Grateful Dead and Phil Lesh and Friends, passed away last night. The exact circumstances surrounding his passing remain private, but there is no mystery around who kept him alive: Cody.

"I'm only alive today because a man named Cody decided he wanted to be an organ donor. And he did it in the simplest way possible: He turned to someone who loved him and he loved, and said, 'Hey, if anything happens to me, I'd like to be an organ donor.'"
- Phil Lesh, 2022 | Donor Rap, YouTube, 2022

Lesh made organ donation his personal cause. In the October 25, 2024, New York Times article by reporter Marc Tracy, organ donation became The Personal Plea Phil Lesh Made Every Time He Took the Stage. The bass player would ask Dead fans to register as organ donors before every encore in an appeal that became known as Donor Rap.

 

If you need an organ, or someone you love needed an organ and one was available, would you accept it? Of course you would. Well, fair is fair.
If you're willing to accept it, then you should be willing to be a donor, as well.

-- Phiil Lesh| Relix Magazine, March 16, 2015

 

Tell me more

Save the life of someone you'll never meet. You may not know the person whose life you save, but you know fellow 'Ringers who are alive today because of the rare generosity of people like Cody. There are liver transplant survivors attending your meetings, running meetings of their own, sitting on the LifeRing Board of Directors. But they are the lucky few. To put it bluntly, the number of people dying for a new liver far surpasses the number of viable donors.

We posted a blog about the demand for liver transplants far exceeding the available supply of viable organs in November 2023. The numbers appear to be even more sobering today. According to an article on the Mayo Clinic News Network this month:

At any given time, there are approximately 10,000 people on the waiting list for a liver transplant in the U.S.
Approximately 20% of people on the list will die waiting for a transplant.

Based on reporting from the Organ Procurement & Transplant Network (OPTN), viable liver donations year to date are down 17.6% in the United States -the lowest donors recovered since 2018:

Viable Livers 2024 2023 2022 2021 2020 2019 2018
All Donor Types
 9,585 11,627 10,415 10,109 9,701 9,676 8,875
Living Donor 460 659 603 568 491 523 402

 

As of September 2024, there are 9,424 people waitlisted for a liver transplant according to the Health Resources & Services Administration (HRSA).

How can I help?

Be a living donor
The liver of a live donor is back to work within 3 months. This from our friends at UCSF Health:

Sign up to be an organ donor
Nothing could be easier -- just complete the form and apply the sticker to your ID!

Donate your body to science (Anatomical Donation)
You can specify that you want transplantable organs to be donated during the registration process

Support organ regeneration research
Cool things are afoot:

Donate to LifeRing
LifeRing hosts a meeting for people in recovery who are also diagnosed with SUD medical conditions. The Liver Spot serves an average of 61 people every week who turn to this meeting for patient-to-patient support. This is only one of the many LifeRing meetings and resources that help people overcome substance use challenges. Support our efforts with your one-time and recurring donations. Please also consider putting some skin in the game!

 

You can help LifeRing provide unique peer-to-peer support resources like The Liver Spot
with your one-time or monthly donations.
Thank you!

 

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