In a big announcement today, Facebook has made it possible for its US and UK users to declare that they are organ donors. From the New York Times:
The company announced a plan on Tuesday morning to encourage everyone on Facebook to start advertising their donor status on their pages, along with their birth dates and schools — a move that it hopes will create peer pressure to nudge more people to add their names to the rolls of registered organ donors.It is a rare foray by Facebook into social engineering from social networking, and one with a potentially profound effect, according to experts in the field of organ donation.
They say people declaring on Facebook that they are organ donors could spur others to sign up at motor vehicle departments or online registries. But these experts say Facebook could create an informal alternative to such registries that could, even though it carries less legal weight, lead to more organ donations.
To be clear, you will still need to register with your local state organ donor registry, but Facebook also makes that easy by providing a link to do so when you make the appropriate declarations on your profile.
To state your intent to be an organ donor, go to your timeline, select "Life Event" and then "Health and Wellness." You'll see the organ donation option there and can follow the links to make your intents known.
Here's a video from Facebook that explains it in more detail.
What do you think?
Will you state your organ donor status on Facebook?