Following up on a health feature teased just yesterday, Facebook today announced a new option that allows users to add their organ donor status to their accounts.
Although the added feature might appear to represent a small addition to Facebook's account options, the company clearly sees this as a major development and gave an exclusive presentation and interview to ABC's Good Morning America to show users how the system works.
In short, when users access their accounts, they can now go to their Timeline, click on the Life Event option, navigate to the Health and Wellness section, and then select the Organ Donor option to add it to their profile. The feature also provides a link to official organ donor registries for unregistered donors. And, for those concerned about the privacy surrounding the new feature, users can make their status public, private or just for friends.
"Today, more than 114,000 people in the United States, and millions more around the globe, are waiting for the heart, kidney or liver transplant that will save their lives," Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg, wrote in a statement. "Many of those people – an average of 18 people per day – will die waiting, because there simply aren't enough organ donors to meet the need. Medical experts believe that broader awareness about organ donation could go a long way toward solving this crisis. And we believe that by simply telling people that you're an organ donor, the power of sharing and connection can play an important role."
As reported by ABC News, part of the inspiration for the new feature came from a fellow Harvard alum, Dr. Andrew Cameron, a transplant surgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Dr. Cameron reportedly wrote about the current crisis of too few organ donors in a recent Harvard Reunion Class report, and ran into Sandberg at a reunion event. According to Cameron, "She said, 'I remember what you wrote last time and I think Facebook can help with the problem of organ donation.'"
However, for all the optimism and life-saving potential described in Facebook's presentation, some skeptics will note that adding one's organ donor information, data that usually appears on one's driver license or state ID, brings us one step closer to making the site a defacto identity registry. Although Facebook's roughly 900 million users aren't currently required to hand over official ID to register their accounts, the company did roll out a verification program recently that asks for picture of a government-issued ID for certain public figures looking to use a nickname or pseudonym on the site.
Nevertheless, Facebook's spin on the new feature leans more toward health and the potential to save lives rather than prepping any sort of global identity bank. And Dr. Cameron, the face of the new initiative, remains extremely optimistic, "There's going to be a 100 million people around the world that declare they want to be an organ donor in the next four days. I think that might happen."
