From Reuters Health:

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A lot of misconceptions about organ donation are
being fed by the entertainment industry, warns Susan Morgan, a Purdue
University health communications expert who is tracking how organ donation is
portrayed on TV and trying to dispel myths about organ donation in the workplace.

Emotionally charged television shows have featured fictitious stories about a
black market for organs, doctors who murder their patients for their organs,
or who declare death prematurely to take their organs, Morgan told Reuters
Health.
“Until we can persuade writers and producers to stop deliberately using
false, medically and logistically impossible plot lines involving organ donation,
the public will continue to believe in so many myths about donation — and
too many people will refuse to donate” as a result, Morgan said.
Surveys Morgan and others have conducted confirm that people very often
believe that what happens on their favorite TV show is real, especially medical
and crime dramas.
Compounding the problem, Morgan said, there is “a huge amount of distrust” of
both the medical system and the organ allocation system. For example, many
people are thoroughly convinced that rich, famous or well-connected people are
much more likely to get organ transplants than ordinary people, she said.
“We’ve learned that we have to counter the most prevalent myths in order to
get people to consider donating their organs after they die,” Morgan said.
She’s working with the New Jersey Workplace Partnership for Life, which provides
tailored health campaigns in workplace settings, to dispel myths about organ
donation in some 45 New Jersey companies and organizations. The project is
supported by a $1.67 million grant from the US
“Our primary goal is not simply to persuade people to become organ donors;
it’s to make sure they have all of the accurate information they need to make a
decision based on the facts,” Morgan said.
There are over 90,000 people waiting for transplants right now and the number
grows every day. Fewer than 40 percent of Americans have signed organ donor
cards and only about half of their families consent to the donation of a
loved one’s organs.
“If everyone who was eligible to donate did donate, we could nearly wipe out
the entire transplant waiting list,” Morgan said.

If you’re afraid to donate your ogans after you die because of some computer animated slow-mo sequence from CSI:Vegas - you’re dumb.
Period.
Keep your kidney

Forget the “you’re dead” part. Let’s look at all donors, including living ones.
Are people honestly no longer able to separate Law & Order storylines from reality? Is someone out there really choosing not to donate a kidney to a person in need because they’re afraid that they will fall asleep in a hospital, and wake up in some seedy Vegas hotel in a tub of ice?
I don’t get it.
I believe it - I just don’t get it.

The media certainly has some fault in this. It is true that transplantation gets way more negative press than positive. We as a society don’t pay as much attention to news when it is positive, and like any smart business they have learned to give the customer what they want.
Face it, the media sells stories and emotion, not fact.
We see this when celebrities receive transplants. The story almost always goes something like “… narrowly avoiding a slow and certain death due to kidney failure, SoandSo received an emergency kidney transplant yesterday with only minutes to spare.”

Forget relying on the meda to get the message out that people need organs, and that the process is very doable. Forget relying on the media to make heroes out of people who do choose to donate life to others.
Forget all of this.
The media is not the answer.
The answer is in legislation. A movement to abolish motorcycle helmet laws.
more ‘donorcycles’ = a faster moving UNOS list
I cheer for every shorts-and-flipflops clad motorcycle rider not wearing a helmet. I cheer that they make it home safely - but should they not, I pray that many people in need will receive organs and tissue.

Full Article Here
*courtesy of Hernando Today Online Edition

I found this link on Fark and couldn’t pass it up. We as a nation are seemingly interested in every facet of our politician’s lives. To the point that we know when and where they are hunting, and how much they’ve reported as income on their individual tax returns.
Interestingly it seems that our unbiased media decided for some reason that the American people might not be interested in knowing that their Vice President gave over 6 Million dollars last year to charity. This is over 3/4 of the Cheney’s reported income. I’m waiting for the inane “yeah, 3/4 of what they reported” argument.

Dick Cheney has not been one to pander to the masses in order to save face. Amidst serious criticism of his job performance, and previous business affiliations VP Cheney has not been one to apologize, or run. Why do I bring this up you ask? Because it’s safe to assume that people will brush this news off saying that he’s simply doing it to look good. It seems though that he hasn’t cared too much about appearances. I would suggest that perhaps he has given to charity in an effort to do good.
Why can’t that be looked at as positive?
From the article:

Of interest, the AP story referred to Cheney’s adjusted gross income as “largely padded” with income he received by exercising stock options that had been set aside for charity. Here’s a guy that sets up a gift arrangement for charity with Halliburton when he took office in 2001 and the AP elects to describe his return as being “padded” — this was income earmarked for charity in 2001.

Seems like it may be pretty difficult to convince the American people you’re doing anything good, when the media refuses to tell them.

It also seems that the L.A. Times writers don’t understand that overpaying the IRS results in a refund with this headline: “Bush pays taxes, Cheney awaits refund” . As if the V.P. is sitting around waiting for money to materialize in his pocket that doesn’t belong to him.

What’s the problem with the media? Have people lost the ability to see things for what they are? (that’s a rhetorical question - because clearly they have)
If our politicians are screwing up then tell us about it - but just give us data.
I’m not looking for a media that lies and shapes the news to their own agenda.

Words have meaning, and the media choose theirs carefully. When they implant pejorative terms into news it slowly desensitizes us to the meaning of specific words. Over time we begin to see things from their viewpoint, rather than simply receiving data that we can then plugin to our own perspective.

We’re seeing this problem big time right now with the immigration issue, and how the media is choosing to report it.
That’s another issue though - perhaps a bit later.

Kudos to Vice President Cheney for giving - for doing something for others rather than self. And I l-l-l-l-love that it was done with Halliburton stock options - for those that thought he was “padding” his own pocket.

Well Anna and I have found a new friend in a family that has just recently moved in.

Ok, so we were WAY late cleaning up Christmas decorations … let’s just get that out of the way first. I can probably be blamed for this.

I just stopped noticing the wreath after awhile.

So I finally say to myself “wow, our X-mas wreath is still up, let’s take care of that,” and as I walk out to do it, I notice a little nest.

“Uhoh” I thought, “too late”.

I figured that mama-bird was probably pretty close to dropping some eggs so I decided to leave it up. Thanks to our neighbor Vanessa (who’s on the HOA board) we won’t be receiving a nasty letter demanding we take it down, which is good. Because if we did receive such a letter I would blow my top over the ugly RV another neighbor has parked right next to our townhome (that sits… and sits… and sits… and …. ).

Anyway, back to the birdies.

I think she’s a single Mom, because I don’t see a Dad lounging around in the nest watching football and drinking cheap beer. What do I see in the nest?

Yep … 6 little eggs.

I can’t WAIT for the inevitable dive bombing that will occur every time we leave our house once they hatch.

Stay tuned for updates.

(sorry, machine’s beeping which means another treatment’s done, and I have to go now)

It appears that everything’s working the way it’s supposed to be finally. Please please let me know if you find things not working well, spefically the things in the sidepar on the right.

I can’t test this in every possible computer configuration (obviously) so I rely on you, my loyal readers to let me know if anything’s amiss.

Thanks!

Ok, things are back to where they were yesterday - not working quite right.

Please bare with me the next few days as I try to get things up and running correctly.

While you’re waiting, why not head over to our forums and start up a conversation there? We would love to have some new contributors!