Parents hope son inspires more black organ donors

Parents hope son inspires more black organ donors
By: COREY WILLIAMS
Associated Press
11/25/09 11:55 AM PST

DETROIT — Connie Spight was pleased when her 17-year-old son, a popular athlete at a prestigious Detroit prep school, sided with her in a 2006 dinner table discussion about organ donation.

"He said, 'You know what dad? I agree with mom. Why not do that to help someone else?'" Spight remembered. "We knew that he was in favor of it, but we didn't think he would go before us."

Her son, Brandon Spight, died early the next year from a rare brain defect. His lungs, kidneys, liver, intestine and heart valves helped save five others.

Now his parents, Connie and her husband, Virgil Spight, are trying to convince other blacks that they too should donate their organs.

Blacks account for nearly a third of the more than 113,000 people awaiting transplants, despite making up only 13 percent of the entire U.S. population, according to the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network.

There's no national database tracking the number of blacks signed up as donors, but it's widely believed to be about 30 percent, said Remonia Chapman, Detroit area program director for the Gift of Life Michigan Minority Organ Tissue Transplant Education Program.

That's not enough, said Clive Callender, professor of surgery at Howard University and director of the school's transplant center. An even more disproportionate number of blacks are waiting for transplants on some organs, such as kidneys, because of higher rates of kidney disease, diabetes, hypertension and other health problems, he said.

While race doesn't matter with most transplants, kidney and bone marrow donors and recipients have a better chance of matching if their race is the same.

"We have to do better than our share," Callender said. "We have got to do as good as we can."

Fear and, in some cases, spiritual beliefs have kept many blacks from donating, he said.

"There was the belief that if you didn't have your organs when you died, you'd be in trouble," Callender said. "If you didn't have your eyes, you wouldn't see grandmother in the great hereafter.

"There also is the basic fear that they might be interested in getting my organs than saving my life. And racism, that they will take my black organs and give them to white people."

The Spights have used Brandon's story to encourage blacks to register as donors in Michigan, where 1,100 of the 2,900 people awaiting an organ donation as of Nov. 1 were black.

Brandon began having severe headaches in early January 2007, during his senior year at the University of Detroit Jesuit High School and Academy. Doctors found bleeding on his brain and eventually diagnosed him with arteriovenous malformation, a congenital abnormality in the arrangement of blood vessels in an area of the brain where arteries and veins are directly connected.

On Jan. 30, 2007, the Spights rushed him to a hospital with stroke-like symptoms. He never went home. Machines kept him alive until Feb. 11, 2007, then he was declared brain dead and his organs donated through Gift of Life Michigan, an organ and tissue recovery organization.

"For some reason, people think that if you're an organ donor the doctors are not going to do everything they possibly can to save you," Connie Spight said.

The Spights allowed Gift of Life Michigan to use Brandon's photo earlier this year on billboards, brochures and posters during the non-profit's campaign to increase donor registries in the Detroit area.

Registrations jumped by at least 300 percent in Detroit and throughout surrounding Wayne County, Chapman said. During April and May — the height of the campaign — Wayne County generated about 18,400 donor registrations, compared with about 3,900 in those two months in 2008.

"You can't have a better story" to encourage other blacks to consider and eventually sign up as organ donors, Callender said. "That's wonderful for all ethnicities to have somebody that young be so unselfish and giving. Getting the young kids whose minds are more flexible than the older folks is a good place to start."

Next month, Brandon's parents and former classmates will design a floral display with his picture that will be included on a float in the Jan. 1 Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena, Calif. Brandon will be one of 76 organ donors featured.

"If we lost him, we wanted some good to come of it," Virgil Spight said. "I keep saying something positive came out of this."

The Spights, both retired Detroit police commanders, also have established a scholarship and endowment in Brandon's name at the University of Detroit Jesuit, and many of his classmates have taken his story with them to colleges across the country where they participate in donor campaigns.

"That's the kind of impact, the kind of legacy this young man continues to give," Chapman said.

http://www.sfexaminer.com/local/ap/young-organ-donors-legacy-part-of-rose-parade-73661077.html