Facebook Now Lets You Advertise Your Organs on Your Profile
There are currently 114,000 people waiting for organ transplants in the U.S., and roughly 7,000 of them die every year while awaiting a donor organ to become available. Meanwhile, there are 161 million Americans on Facebook. That math must have seemed pretty simple to Mark Zuckerberg and company at Facebook HQ, where the team has just added organ donation status to its users' profiles. As the New York Times notes, this is less about social networking and more about social engineering. A declaration on Facebook doesn't necessarily make a person a donor--those who are really serious about legally becoming organ donors should sign up at their state registry (you can do this easily at your local department of motor vehicles or online)--but it very well could help organ donation become a social norm, and spur people who are on the fence or who simply haven't taken the time to legally register...