Facebook's Next Frontier: Your Organs

Zuckerberg says donation push inspired by his girlfriend, Steve Jobs
By Kevin Spak,  Newser Staff
Posted May 1, 2012 7:01 AM CDT
Facebook's Next Frontier: Your Organs
Mark Zuckerberg walks to morning sessions with his girlfriend Priscilla Chan during the 2011 Allen and Co. Sun Valley Conference, July 9, 2011.   (AP Photo/Julie Jacobson)

Facebook is all about sharing, and now Mark Zuckerberg wants you to take that to the next level by sharing, say, your kidney. Starting today, Facebook will allow users to post to their timelines that they are organ donors, and provide an easy link to sign up with official organ donor registries. "We want to make it simple," Mark Zuckerberg tells ABC News.

Zuckerberg says he was inspired to take the step both by his med student girlfriend, Priscilla Chan, and the plight of Steve Jobs, whose life was extended by a liver donation. "The Facebook community has also shown us that simply through sharing and connecting, the world gets smaller and better," Zuckerberg and Facebook's COO write in a brief op-ed. "Even one individual can have an outsized impact on the challenges facing another, and on the world." Expectations are also outsized: "I think it’s possible that we will see an impact over the next couple of years, where we would imagine eliminating the transplant waiting list,” says a Johns Hopkins transplant surgeon. (More Mark Zuckerberg stories.)

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