Motorcycle Rallies Linked to Spike in Organ Donations
Yup, the percentages look alarming. But a quick look at the numbers seems to indicate this study is all smoke and no fire.
It’s no secret that riding motorcycles can be dangerous. But if you’ve managed to remain blissfully unaware of that fact? Well, a new study helmed by Massachusetts General Hospital is here to enlighten you. In the just-published abstract, the researchers have appeared to link a spike in organ donations to the presence of large motorcycle rallies. Here’s a relevant quote from the intro to the paper.
In this cross-sectional study of 10 798 organ donors and 35 329 recipients of these organs from a national transplant registry from 2005 to 2021, there were 21% more organ donors and 26% more transplant recipients per day during motorcycle rallies in regions near those rallies compared with the 4 weeks before and after the rallies.
Of course, it’s clear people get hurt, or even killed, at motorcycle rallies. That said, the 21% and 26% percent figures seem alarming — at least at first glance. So I decided to take a look at home many people died at Sturgis — the country’s largest motorcycle rally — in recent years. As you might have expected, the annual meetup in South Dakota isn’t exactly a bloodbath.
In 2021, officials in the Mount Rushmore State determined that there were just four deaths attributed the rally, and 2022 saw just three fatalities.
Now, nobody wants to think about someone attending a rally and coming home in a body bag. And I don’t think many bikers are heading to Sturgis to recreationally donate a kidney. So let’s look at the numbers. In 2022, 505,000 people went to Sturgis, and at 555,000, the total for 2021 was even higher. Given that it’s fairly unusual to have deaths at the event to hit double digits, you have to start wondering — is Sturgis that statistically dangerous?
In my opinion, this correlation has more to to with the relatively small amount of transplants happening in the period surrounding the rally. Because if there were only, say, ten transplants occurring, that could explain the dramatic swings. And since less than 100 organ transplants happen in the United States every day, fluctuations like this seem insignificant, which makes this study seem like a waste of time.
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