Living legacy of being a donor

I AM the father of a seven-year-old boy, Nicholas Green, who was shot in Italy during a botched robbery while we were on holiday there. My wife and I donated his organs and corneas to seven very sick Italians, four of them teenagers. Without a transplant, two would be blind and most, if not all, the others dead (www.nicholasgreen.org).

So I was intrigued by Fordyce Maxwell's column whose headline said organ donation is fine as long as you're dead.

I enjoyed the humour, but I would like him to know that people who are still alive are one of the most rapidly growing groups of donors – they give a kidney or part of a liver or even part of a lung, generally to a family member but sometimes to complete strangers. Many of them regard it as the most important thing they ever did.

But even when someone dies, a donation can be the one good thing to come out of a situation in which you can see no other good at all. I've met literally hundreds of donor families and can scarcely remember one who regretted it. It doesn't take the pain away, but knowing that someone you love saved several families from devastation, when no-one else in the world could, can be a much-needed solace.

Reg Green, California