RESPONSE: A Solemn Responsibility

Suicides, homicides, car accidents, and other potentially preventable traumas have always been a component of organ donation—relatively young and healthy individuals whose premature deaths provide life to others through transplantation. The opioid epidemic should give physicians ethical pause, not for its impact on organ donation, but for how our communities have gotten to this appalling place. Donors are not a source or a supply of organs; they are people who have made the lifesaving legacy of donation one of the most vibrant examples of human interconnectivity.