i'm finding out about becoming an organ donor in massachusetts. i was thinking yesterday that i've been home for less than seven weeks in the last sixteen months, so it seems silly that i am registered at home instead of in mass. it's a simple question of probability, isn't it? (7 weeks in sixteen months! the fact is that i still think of myself as living in singapore, and studying in the us, but that's hardly true is it? i still vote in singapore and i still call it home, but i really don't live there anymore. oh. oh.) marrow and blood stem cell donation is easy because harvard medical school administers the tests and maintains the registry i can just pop over to the longwood campus. but there doesn't seem to be some kind of registration process for organ donation i looked on all the websites and they say simply to 1) indicate your intent on your driver's license, (i haven't got a driver's license) carry an organ donor card (this appears to be something you download and print and sign. that doesn't sound very official.) and to discuss this with your family so that they can give consent (but my parents are perfectly sensible about these things, and anyway i haven't got any one else to object - am not married, have no children, no living grandparents, am an only child. there.) so it really doesn't seem like there's anything to do. how strange the americans do it this way! in australia there are forms to witness and submit and at home of course it's opt-out with the revised HOTA and i'd gone down to NUH and put myself on the bone marrow register when i turned 21. how do you know they'll carry out your wishes, and how do the doctors know if there isn't some kind of central registration system? you could carry a donor card but, suppose you hadn't got it on you or it was all burnt up in the wreckage of your car or the ink ran or something? i wish there was some more official way of expressing your wish to be an organ donor, in the way people make advance medical directives.