FOXNews.com: Facebook adds 'organ donor' status to member profiles

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Facebook adds 'organ donor' status to member profiles May 1st 2012, 11:52 Facebook announced plans Tuesday to encourage its 161 million members to add their organ donor status to their Timeline, as well as their birth dates and schools, The New York Times reported.  The company hopes the move will encourage more people to register as donors. Organ donation experts say the plan has the potential to produce a 'profound effect' and spur people to sign up at motor vehicle departments or online registry.  They also said it could create an informal alternative to the registries, though one that carries less legal weight. According to the Times, a person declaring he or she would like to be an organ donor on Facebook could lead to more organ donations because it could indicate consent to family members who are deciding whether or not to donate a loved one's organs. "This is going to be an historic day in transplant," Dr. Andrew Cameron told The New York Times.  He said many of 7,000 people who die waiting for an organ do so because there are not enough donors, not because medical technology is lacking. "The math will radically change, and we may well eliminate the problem," Cameron added, estimating that millions of people could be considered new potential donors overnight. The new organ donor status will appear in a Health and Wellness biographical section, where members can also indicate whether they have lost weight or have ever broken a bone. "We never could have anticipated that what started as a small network would evolve into such a powerful tool for communication and problem solving," said Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and chief executive of Facebook, and Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer, in a statement. "As this happens, we hope to build tools that help people transform the way we all solve worldwide social problems." Click here to read more from the New York Times.

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