Organ & Body Donations: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

Thanks to John Oliver for making the decline of the human race so entertaining.

As someone with stage 4 neuroendocrine cancer and a genetic abnormality that has helped me survive much longer than I should, I've chosen to donate my body to the teaching hospital where I've been receiving treatments. They're actually excited about the possibility, seeing as how neuroendocrine cancer is highly uncommon and doesn't act like other cancers, and my liver is extremely efficient, being able to process narcotic painkillers like they're candy and function at normal levels even with only 20% of it not being tumors. I'm hoping my donation will be able to help people both understand neuroendocrine cancer better, and perhaps lead to genetic understanding and implementation of my liver's strength to others.

I'm in the process of donating a kidney to a swedish friend I know from the internet. We met for the first time during compatibility testing last month. Good news! We're compatible! The donation happens this february!

My husband was an organ donor. It was hard because they have to take them pretty quickly after they die, but I knew he had signed up to be one and I knew that was his wish. Months afterwards I got a letter thanking him/me for corneas that two people needed. It made me feel like he is living on in them.

I lost my wife on March of 22. She was a donor. Her donations have helped my grief in so many ways. She's helped restore 3 people vision. That's the ones I i know about. I wish it was easier for Donor families to find out what the donations are used for. I understand anonymity. The eye bank provided me with the information after a request. They didn't disclose any names. Thank you for doing a piece in this subject. If you're not a donor already, please consider becoming one. You could be saving lives and making people's quality of life better from beyond the grave. That's pretty amazing to me! I love you Rebecca Lynn Smith. Thank you for your selfless donations. I miss you so much.😢

We donated our 9yr old daughter’s heart, liver, and kidneys. She saved 4 lives. Kinda hard to watch the dog eating up the human heart 🫀…. No one probably will read this but I felt I wanted to state it anyway, signed a mom that still grieves.

Can I just say, the writers of this show deserve a Nobel. This show maintains speed with comprehensiveness like none other can

I think that clip with the woman meeting the family of the woman whose heart saved her life was the first time this show made me cry. Wow.

When my daughter Jana passed away, I was able to donate her corneas. A 5 yr old boy and a 17 yr old boy both gained sight because of her gift.

When you put people that want to profit in charge of this kind of stuff they will lie to keep the money. That's why you need to be public, at least you can see the problems

I’m in the hospital now, waiting on heart surgery later this week to keep me alive until I can hopefully one day receive a heart transplant… I’m a huge fan and I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so hard at an opening of this show before. Informative, important, and hilarious. You are an absolute treasure, and much appreciated. Love and greetings from Kansas City tonight 🌻

My dad did his surgical residency at Emory University in Atlanta, GA, so he knew how important real bodies are for medical training. He donated his body to Emory medical school, and near his death at 96, as his caregiver I carried the paperwork with me at all times so that when he passed away arrangements could immediately be made. While the school made use of Dad’s body we had a memorial service, and when the school was finished they cremated and returned him to me for burial. When I picked up his cremains I learned he had been used for emergency room training. Appropriate, since he was an ER surgeon for many years.

I'm a medical student and I've worked with more human cadavers than i can count. I can't put into words how incredibly grateful I am to the donors and their families. It's such an invaluable learning tool to be able to work with real human tissues, and my first teacher in this field really hammered it home for me - these aren't just specimen to work with, they're my patients and they deserve the same dignity and respect that i give to my living patients.

Imagine being a patient in need, going through surgery, and then finding out that deep inside you, you had John Oliver’s heart.

One of my cousins has cystic fibrosis and was supposed to die in his teens. He was able to get a double lung transplant and is now almost in his late 30s, married and has two kids. God bless that person and their family, their loss helped him gain his whole family. So thankful he’s still around.

As someone who's life almost ended at 17 due to hepatic failure from a mitochondrial disease I am 1000% donating whatever useable body parts I have to people who need them.

The heartbeat. God, I was instantly in tears. I'm an organ donor., have been since it was legal for me to agree to it. This is important to me.

In my kinesiology class we had two cadavers. The first two hour lecture was about respect for people who made the choice to leave their bodies to science.

That heartbeat teddybear is literally the sweetest thing I've ever seen and I love it immensely

I just got my kidney transplant that I have needed since I was 12, on December 21, 2023, just a few weeks after my 34th birthday. I hate to see how often kidney transplants are a dehumanizing punchline in TV shows and movies. really amazing to see this covered with a healthy mix of dark humour and really sincere coverage on the topic, but that's classic last week tonight isn't it? <3