Wow, it's been a while since I last posted. I'd come up with some sort of excuse but I don't really have one. I've just been lazy I guess.

I've been meaning to get back into updating this for a while but kept putting it off. Last night, however, I had an odd little train of thought that I immediately thought I should make a blog of. I would have written it last night but I was already in bed. :P

Yesterday afternoon when I was looking at the mail, I noticed that there was mail for me (This is a rather uncommon event as I only get maybe 2 or 3 pieces of mail a month). I opened said mail and saw that it was a form for renewing my health card as my current one is supposed to expire at the end of August.

Also included on the form is a question about organ donation. I've been an organ donor since I was 16 so I naturally checked the yes to all organs box and sent it away (I'm an atheist and I don't believe in any sort of afterlife so I can't see any reason to hang onto my orgrans, esp if they might save a life (or lives)).

Flash forward to 11:45ish and I'm lying in bed trying to get to sleep. In the course of my pre-sleep thoughts, I thought of an episode of Babylon 5 (not quite sure why as I haven't been able to see an ep of that show in a couple years). In this particular episode one of the characters utulizes an alien machine which drains his life (and ultimately kills him) to save the life of another character. The machine was featured in one earlier episode and it was explained as belonging to some extinct culture which used the machine as a method of execution (the idea was that the one being executed would bring some good about through his death).

I then thought of this in relation to the whole organ donation thing from earlier in the day and a few of questions came about. Has anyone who was due to be executed (in the US, as it's not an issue in Canada) ever tried to donate their organs? Would the method of execution be altered to accomodate this? Were they allowed to donate?

I figure, with all the people who are executed in the US, there has to have been at least a few who wanted to donate their organs. Perhaps they felt bad about their crime and wanted to try and make ammends, or maybe they just figured they wouldn't need the organs after they were dead.

If someone was going to donate their organs, it seems to me that many of the standard methods of execution wouldn't really be available. The electric chair would certainly damage the organs. Ditto with a firing squad. I'm not 100% certain about lethal injection but I imagine that would damage at least some of the organs. Gas chamber is also likely to damage organs. Hanging would probably cause the least damage to organs but that's not really done anymore to my knowledge. Seems like they'd almost have to come up with a different method to accomodate a donor.

As to whether donations would be allowed, I'm thinking that they probably aren't. Capital punishment has a lot of opposition already; if opponents of the death penalty could promote these people who donated their organs, and in the process saved a life or two, it'd be a lot harder for those in favor of the death penalty to promore the executed as being irredeemibly bad.

I'm against the death penalty myself but I'd like to see prisoners being allowed to donate organs. Then, at least some good would come out of state-sanctioned murder.

Of course, organ donations may be allowed now, I haven't done any research into the matter. Does anyone know anything about this?
The topic is kinda morbid but I'm curious as to whether donation is permitted or not.