Everyone Should Automatically Be Opted into an Organ Donation Scheme

About 90% of people agree with the principle of organ donation yet only 25% of Britons have signed-up. As a result it’s estimated that each year 400 people on waiting list will die from not getting the organ they need. An opt-out scheme would solve this problem in one fell swoop.

The body is a use-once vessel. We don’t take our organs with us and wont need them wherever we go. However, other people might get great benefit from the things we have no more use for. It is selfish for people to want to hang on to their organs.

Most opponents of the opt-in scheme seem to be arguing from the perspective of a relative to the loved-one. But imagine if you or someone you loved needed a transplant. What would you do in order to get the heart or lung they needed? If no organs were available I bet you’d be begging someone on life-support to give theirs. This scheme takes away that.

There is a serious shortage of organs for transplant in the UK, with about 5,600 people on the transplant waiting list but fewer than 3,000 transplant operations carried out every year. Although about 70% of the public say in surveys that they would be willing for their organs to be used by others after their death, only around 15% have signed the NHS organ donor register. Many organs are therefore buried or cremated when their owners would have wanted them to be used again, if possible. Moving to a system of presumed consent would enable those who object to the use of their organs to have their views respected, while ensuring the maximum possible donation rate from the rest of the population. Similar systems work in Sweden, in Spain (which has a ‘soft opt-out’ system where the views of close relatives are taken into account) and in Austria (which has a ‘hard opt-out’ system where relatives’ views are ignored). Spain has a higher number of donors than the UK and is the only country to have sustained a year-on-year increase in organ donation for the last ten years.

-Many people actually support organ donation but never actually opt into it but yet they feel free, when they are in need of an organ, to use an organ donors organs.

-You have no use for your organs when your dead.

-You should feel happy that even in death you can still save anothers life.

-One organ donor can donate a majority of its organs, saving and improving many lives.

-If you really don’t support organ donation, you can always opt out

It goes without saying that organ donation, in virtually all cases, is a good thing. It helps to save lives, generally does no harm. Unfortunately, most people aren’t organ donors. This is not because they don’t believe in the cause, but because they’re simply too lazy to go out and fill in the form that makes them an organ donor. Statistics show that the majority of people in North American and European nations support the idea of organ donation. In most countries, however, only a small portion of the population are actually organ donors.

In France, 98% of citizens are organ donors, compared to only about 25% in North America and most other European nations. This is because in France, all people are organ donors at birth. As a society, we tend to choose the “default” option. If people are automatically organ donors at birth, they can still choose to opt out of being an organ donor at any time. However, those who are impartial and are not severely opposed to organ donation will have the chance to help people in need.

There is a desperate shortage of organ donors in the U.S. Your going to be dead anyways and your organs are just going to deterioriate! If you can give anything useful to another than it should be harvested. It also gives many people a second chance at life. What if your loved one was a reciepient!

Under the current system, the final decision over whether an organ is donated is made by the potential donor’s family. In many cases, family members may not know their relative’s wishes, and may offer an objection which the donor would not support – for example, they may hold beliefs about the importance of bodily integrity before burial which their relative rejected. Consulting the family is a denial of the donor’s autonomy.

The death of a relative is always extremely traumatic. At this difficult time, families are not best placed to make the right decision on their relative’s behalf. It is wrong to place such a heavy extra burden on them, and better to leave it to the donor herself.

The number of donors in the USA has declined following an initial increase on the introduction of the ‘required request’ rule. The key point about Spain is that, despite the fact that it routinely consults relatives, it operates an opt-out system and the wishes of the donor are key – it is an example on the proposition side. The only way of ensuring the maximisation of donated organs is to operate a strict opt-out system so that every suitable organ can be used for donation unless the donor specifically objects

If indeed the last thing people want is to be forced to make a difficult decision lets make the decision for them. If the golden rule is that organs will be used whenever there is a need their actual use will not come as a surprise and may even be a source of comfort in later years.

People will get over the fact their loved one’s organs have been used, even against their wishes. But the person who would have died without the transplant, or the person whose life is immeasurably improved, will never get over not having the transplant.

An organ donation list can hardly be compared to a mailing list. And imagine the stink that would be caused should people not be able to opt-out. You can be sure that the newspapers opposed to the scheme would be the first to learn about problems and would make a huge fuss if any were found. In such instances, the damage to the system would be irreversible and, therefore, it’s hard to imagine any system not explicitly following the requests of anyone not wishing to participate.

Surely it cannot be beyond our ability to come up with safeguards to prevent such an occurrence. Ethical specialists could create firm guidelines for doctors to proceed; perhaps only switching off life-support when approval from three different consultants has been gained.

Many European countries already have such a scheme with no problems

Countries such as Sweden, Austria and Spain have such a system, and their organ donation rates are much higher than in the UK. There has been no significant backlash from the public since such schemes were introduced, and indeed Spain has even had such legislation since 1979.