Steve Jobs helps push organ donation legislation

During a surprise appearance at the Lucile Packard Children's Hospital in Palo Alto, California, Steve Jobs joined California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to help advance organ donation legislation.

Last year, Jobs flew to Tennessee to receive a liver transplant, and spoke briefly of this. "There were not enough livers in California to go around," he said, according to the San Jose Mercury News. "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."

And without the transplant, Jobs said, "I could have died."

Steve Jobs returned to work at Apple in June 2009 and, according to the report, told other transplant survivors that he is currently feeling fine. "It's been a pretty good last few months."

If passed, the legislation could help save more lives by making it easier for Californians to affirm their preferred organ donor status. The current system, says Jobs, "is an obscure process." Full text of the legislation, Senate Bill 1395, can be viewed here.

To find out more about organ donation, visit Donate Life America, the Mayo Clinic's 10 myths of organ donation, and, lastly, state organ and tissue donor registries at OrganDonor.Gov.

[via Silicon Alley Insider]