Skip to main content

Steve Jobs helps pass California organ donation bill

http://www.gov.ca.gov/player-licensed-viral.swf

Steve Jobs (who starts talking 13:00 in) made an appearance at the unveiling of a new California Bill SB 1395 that would require driver’s license registrants to tick off whether or not they’d like to be a donor or not, rather than the current system which makes them fill out a separate form.    According to the Mercury News, Jobs convinced lawmakers to put forward the legislation in order to make more organs available to patients waiting for them.  Jobs sees this legislation as doubling the amount of organs being made available.

To find out more visit Donate Life America, 10 myths of organ donation, and OrganDonor.Gov.

“Steve Jobs’ was very instrumental in getting us here today,” said the governor. “Steve Jobs told my wife about his transplant and she talked to me. Then we had great phone conversations back and forth. … He knew that others don’t have a plane waiting for them to get to a transplant.”

Jobs said, “There were not enough livers in California to go around. I was advised by my Stanford doctors to enroll on a list at a Memphis hospital, because it was more favorable to get a liver there.

“I was fortunate,” he said because he had the ability to fly cross country in the four-hour window needed to transplant a healthy organ. “Last year, 400 other Californians died waiting. I could have died.”

He called current system “an obscure process” with “no one asking the simple question: Will you donate your organs?”

Of his current health, the whippet-thin Jobs told other transplant survivors who attended the Friday news conference, “I’m feeling fine. I almost died. It’s been a pretty good last few months.”

http://cdn.abclocal.go.com/static/flash/embeddedPlayer/swf/otvEmLoader.swf?version=&station=kgo&section=&mediaId=7340002&cdnRoot=http://cdn.abclocal.go.com&webRoot=http://abclocal.go.com&site=

FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.

You’re reading 9to5Mac — experts who break news about Apple and its surrounding ecosystem, day after day. Be sure to check out our homepage for all the latest news, and follow 9to5Mac on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to stay in the loop. Don’t know where to start? Check out our exclusive stories, reviews, how-tos, and subscribe to our YouTube channel