Who has the rights to your remains once you're gone?
If one of your organs could save a life, should the state be able to take it without waiting for permission from your next of kin?
The proposed John Doe law raises these and other legal, ethical and religious questions.
Soon a clock may start ticking in Nevada whenever there's a serious accident. Let's say a head injury has left the driver brain-dead. A donor group wants to harvest the victim's organs for transplantation, but nobody knows at this point who the deceased is or whether they wanted to be an organ donor.
Under a proposed law, if authorities can't locate the next of kin within 12-hours, the victim's organs could legally be removed without his family's permission.
"It's not our intent to take away rights from the next of kin, even though that may be a consequence, but our real focus needs to be on saving lives," says Ken Richardson, Nevada Donor Network.
"And to think there was a chance for a person to get an organ that would otherwise be wasted, to me that's just a, I won't go as far as saying it's a crime. But it's a shame," says Jerry Prone, transplant recipient.
Prone has a personal reason for favoring the proposed law. In his chest beats a transplanted heart.
"How bad did I need it? I needed it to live. I would have died without it," says Prone.
"This office has always been pro-organ donor, but at the same time I think it's a decision that's left up to the decedent or the next of kin," says Ron Flud, county coroner.
Clark County Coroner Ron Flud not only thinks the decision should be left to the family, he says it often takes days, not hours, to identify a John Doe and locate the next of kin.
"The 12-hour time frame that they want to put on the coroner's office to make that identification and notification is just flat not realistic," says Flud.
But donor groups say that 12-hours is about as long as they can wait to harvest the organs.
"The longer we wait before going to surgery the greater the chance that the donations, the organs, will not be viable for transplantation," says Ken Richardson, Nevada Donor Network.
So how do Nevadans feel about the issue? We went to the DMV to find out. We found slightly more people willing to be donors than not.
"I'm not going to able to use those organs when I'm dead anyway -- so they might as well go to a good cause," says Gilbert Martinez, organ donor.
"Sure. I mean, why not? You're dead anyways," says Grant Cropper, organ donor.
"I used to be a Jehovah's Witness and they don't take any blood or anything like that, so I still kinda believe in that," says William Wright, non-organ donor.
With more than 40-percent of Nevada's drivers electing not to be donors, it's almost certain that under the new law, organs will eventually be harvested from a John or Jane Doe who did not want their organs taken.
"If we do err once in a while, we've erred for a good reason. I mean it's not as if we're taking the organs and selling them for a profit. We're taking the organ to help keep another person alive," says Prone.
Jerry may have boiled the debate down to the core issue. Is the need for organs so great that it outweighs potential legal, ethical and religious problems?
Even though California already has a similar law, the Los Angeles County Coroner's office refuses to allow organ donations from John Does, for much the same reason our local coroner opposes it.
"I don't know what their religious backgrounds are, what their beliefs are or what their family's beliefs are on organ donation. So, I think it's inappropriate for me to make that decision," says Ron Flud, County Coroner.
But the proposed Nevada law could take the decision out of the coroner's hands and place it in the hands of a judge.
Proponents believe that would help prevent lawsuits from families of John and Jane Does who find out after the fact that their loved one's organs were taken.
"We may face litigation, perhaps public condemnation who will see us as rather ghoulish. But I think our intent is to bring these issues out for debate and let's understand how society really views these issues," says Ken Richardson, Nevada Donor Network.
Assemblywoman Dawn Gibbons is sponsoring the proposed John Doe law.
Sam Beli
"...religion opposes the commandments of Almighty God." Violence by J. F. Rutherford 1938