Oh don’t “shame” me...the statistics are all over the place...broken down into race, creed, religious, belief systems . See also my statistics at the bottom! The over all donor rate/potential donors is 10 percent/ US potential donor population with 6.3 percent/per capita of potential African American donor rate.(take 100 per cent of all potential African American donors...only 6.3 per cent of those donate for whatever reasons) The race issue is not about whether or not blacks get kidneys or other organs but whether or not they donate on par with other races and WHY......Your facts don’t cite that the donation part!
With the history of experimentation (ie Tuskagee) and sterilisation practises in the past, the Blacks have an aversion to donation for fear they would quickly be “snuffed”. They also will not sign quick DNR’s and want everything done to the point where the pressor agents are the only thing that keep the heart beating until the toxins finally intefere with sodium/potassium pump process of the heart. I talk to these folks, a lot!
This little table at the bottom explains the donor rates per capita in terms of age, race sex, gender. The over all per capita rates are at the bottom. The percentages are in decimal points in the third column. We find that blacks and “other” donate at about 6-7 percent of donor rate potentials while whites and hispanics donate at 11 percent donor rate potentials. Now the question is why?....one can argue ignorance or education or in the conversations I’ve heard..historic mistrust! And I don’t blame blacks...I mistrust the organ donation system as well.
There aren’t enough safe guards especially from the “donation true beleiver” types who are quick to write off those who are going to need expensive care but may have the potential to recover to use-ful lives.
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1464027
National Donor Rates (NDRs) by Age, Sex, and Race
Population Descriptors National Donor Rate Potential Actual NDR
Overall NDR 9,830 98,628 0.0997
White
Female
0–17 557 1,481 0.3761
18–49 1,507 6,298 0.2393
50–74 980 21,774 0.045
Male
0–17 1,086 2,237 0.4855
18–49 2,598 12,075 0.2152
50–74 925 25,206 0.0367
Black
Female
0–17 94 361 0.2604
18–49 193 2,391 0.0807
50–74 75 5,530 0.0136
Male
0–17 249 615 0.4049
18–49 452 3,877 0.1166
50–74 71 6,000 0.0118
Hispanic
Female
0–17 68 249 0.2731
18–49 149 874 0.1705
50–74 55 1,511 0.0364
Male
0–17 152 469 0.3241
18–49 350 2,626 0.1333
50–74 56 1,927 0.0291
Other
Female
0–17 21 79 0.2658
18–49 42 386 0.1088
50–74 27 946 0.0285
Male
0–17 31 119 0.2605
18–49 66 570 0.1158
50–74 26 1,027 0.0253
Other Major Groups
Sex
Female, all 3,768 41,880 0.09
Male,all 6,062 56,748 0.11
Age Groups
0–17 2,258 5,610 0.402
18–49 5,357 29,097 0.184
50–74 2,215 63,921 0.035
Race
White 7,653 69,071 0.11
Black 1,134 18,774 0.063
Hispanic 830 7,656 0.11
Other 213 3,127 0.068
You were the one that mistakenly stated that African Americans received 50% of organ donations while representing only 12% of the population. I just wanted to make clear that is not the case.
You donor rates are old also. The data you referenced is from 1994-1995. Since then, there have been major campaigns to educate the African American community about the benefits of organ donation. Also, there has been a push to educate health care workers as well, as blacks had been far less likely to be designated as a potential organ donor than whites.
Recent data indicates that of 5423 transplants completed so far in 2007, 871 have been from African American donors. This represents 16%. Data from 2006 is similar. You can find all this information at the website I referenced in my previous post.
If you are going to make a generalization, you should use recent information. You would not want to receive health care from 1994-95 standards, yet you cite donor rates from 1994-95 as part of your theory that patients in hospitals are in danger of having their organs harvested prematurely. I am not sure what your ethnicity statistics were supposed to prove, but they were not correct. You never answered my questions about whether you know of any patient whose organs were harvested prematurely. If you believe that it is unsafe to designate that you would like to be an organ donor, I would think that you would have some reason other than statistics from 1994.