Blood type

[MaryxTyphus]

Harvesters. I didn't think of them.

Damnit, now I'm even more scared.

[Tellner]

Actually, and very sadly, the only thing that stopped me from filling out the organ donor card was watching Monty Python and the Meaning of Life's segment on live organ donation. Though totally funny, it made me think that the doctors may not try as hard to help me out of a coma if some rich folks needed a few spare parts...

Now, I doubt anyone would be interested in these beat-up old swan pieces.

Come on, cuteswan. Think about it for a moment. First, you'd have to be that one in a bazillion perfect match for a rich person who happened to be just your type. That person would have to identify you and somehow have you tissue matched, which isn't normally done on hospital admission. They'd have to get in touch with your doctor and offer a big enough bribe to overcome his or her professional ethics and fear of being sued, prosecuted, stripped of the medical license and the loss of the money that would be spent keeping you alive.

Besides, most people who are in the hospital aren't great organ donor candidates anyway. If you've got any of a huge number of diseases or chronic conditions you aren't eligible at all. Most donors of major only-one-of-us-can-survive organ systems are young people who die violent deaths from homicide or traffic accidents. If it's not one of those, if it's a kidney, bone marrow or similar, they're not going to kill you for it. They'll ask.

I was in the Red Cross marrow donation program for twenty years, HLA pre-tested and the whole nine yards. I only came up as a near match once, and the patient had died before they got around to testing me further.

So don't sweat it. It makes great paranoid thriller fiction. It's so far removed from the real world that you have nothing to worry about.