Last week, the virtues of organ donation were extolled with news that actor Jerry Orbach had made sure to donate his eyes to two New Yorkers. But making sure that people know you would be a willing organ donor is not so easy. The Daily News points out the license format is not very donation-permission friendly. The surface quality of the licenses which is meant to prevent counterfeiting does a good job of not registering pen ink. (And it also turns out that simply signing the back of your license "doesn't constitute full legal permission to harvest organs, but it may at least indicate a desire to do so.")
The DMV tells the News they'll look into the difficulties signing the organ donation (or is that "anatomical gift") portion of the license. And NY State encourages people to indicate they want to donate their organs by enrolling in the state's organ donation list. Here's more information about organ donation at the NY State Department of Health's website.
