I looked at the expiration date on my driver's license the other day, and realized grimly that it's expiring soon and in a few months I'll have to renew it.

Of course I have all the usual fears regarding taking the DMV written driving test again, but what's been on my mind even more is the little paper you sign on the back of your license, indicating you are willing to be an organ donor.

There has been some talk lately of re-vamping the current "opt-in" organ donation system, where you declare yourself a donor, to an "opt-out" system, where it's assumed you are willing to be a donor unless you declare otherwise.

But I think before we change the current system, we need to address the issues surrounding the organ donation network itself. Should I, as the owner of a healthy heart, liver, and kidneys, be allowed a posthumous say in who gets these organs after I'm no longer using them? Right now, that answer is "no."

In general, I like to think that if I'm no longer using something, whether it's my bicycle, my jewelry, or my liver, that I'm okay with someone else having it. But regarding my organs, it's who is going to potentially inherit them that makes me uncomfortable.

Back when I thought organ donations went mainly to children and folks who had the bad luck to be born with a malfunctioning liver, heart or kidneys, I had no problems with the thought of donation. In fact, it made me happy to know that I could possibly save someone else's life as mine was ending.

But then in the mid-1990s, singer/songwriter David Crosby made his way, not to the top of the charts, but to the top of the liver transplant list, eventually receiving a donor liver after trashing the one he'd been born with by abusing alcohol and drugs for years.

Mr. Crosby may be a talented, gifted musician who has added invaluably to our culture by his inspired songwriting, but did he deserve to be a top candidate for a liver transplant after he willingly ruined his own?

There's also the issue of incarcerated prisoners (including those convicted to the most serious crimes imaginable) having as much right to be on the National Organ Registry lists as the next citizen.

So the question begs: What role, if any, should a medical patient's societal worth or morality play in the allocation of much-needed healthy donor organs?

I like to think that my organs could provide the gift of life to someone who needs it. But in the shadows of my mind, drug and alcohol abusers like David Crosby, and murderers like Scott Peterson lurk; folks who (if I'm reading the protocols correctly) could ostensibly demand a new set of organs from the system when their old ones fail.

Of course as of this writing, both Mr. Crosby's new liver and Mr. Peterson's original organs are not in any immediate danger (although it is interesting to note that Mr. Crosby was arrested in 2004 -- 10 years post-transplant -- and was found to have several ounces on marijuana on him, possibly indicating his habit of illegal drug use may not have stopped completely). But you see the point. Should someone's personal history be a factor in whether they can receive healthy organs?

Maybe it's silly to worry about where our liver or heart is going after we die. But we care enough about our jewelry, our stocks and our houses to have a will in place for their disposition once we're gone; we write up "managed care directives," outlining the medical interventions we are, and are not, willing to undergo in order to prolong our lives. Why should it be any different for our organs, which are undisputedly ours in a way nothing else can be?

Unfortunately, there is no way, at this time anyway, to stipulate who gets our organs once we're gone. It's done by committee calculation, based a "points" system based on which potential recipient is the sickest, the best match, and the closest geographically.

This is how David Crosby probably jumped to the head of the New Liver line at the hospital, over the jaundiced five-year-olds who never took a drink or injected heroin in their short and innocent lives. And call me crazy, but I want my organs to go to the 5-year-old kid laying in a hospital bed rather than a lifetime drug and alcohol abuser, or some guy whose current address is cell block XYZ in Pelican Bay. It's my liver; shouldn't I have the right to create a "will" for who I'd bequeath this life-saving gift to?

I hope this issue is addressed before the current "opt-in/opt-out" system is revamped. In the meantime, I wish there was a way for me to opt out of giving David Crosby or a life-sentence prison inmate my heart, liver, or kidneys.

Because even though, once I'm dead, my organs are "free to a good home," I'd like to have some say in choosing what kind of home they go to.

Diane Sayre is a freelance writer living in Hanford. Her column appears weekly in the Sentinel. Readers can write to her at The Hanford Sentinel, P.O. Box 9, Hanford, CA 93232.

(Feb. 18, 2008)