Organ Donation

[Tommy-K]

At the moment, Britain has an 'opt-in' ystem with regards to organ donation. However, surveys have show that 70% of the population would like to donate their organs, but only 20% do. The other 50% never get round to signing up for it.

The chief medical officer in Britain has now suggested an 'opt-out' scheme, where everyone is an organ doner, unless they opt out.

I think this is a fantastic idea. It will eliminate the shortage of organs for transplant patients, and those who really don't want to donate their organs can just say they don't want to.

Of course they had some brainless woman from the Evening Standard on TV complaining that it was an 'outrage'.

What do you guys think?

[Qwerty Dvorak]

I think it's a brilliant idea, and I'd like to see it given some serious consideration over there. Hopefully if meets with any success we could imitate it over here.

[Aurora]

Ya i heard about this on the radio the other day,fantastic idea,i really hope it goes ahead because it can save a good many lives.

[Comrade J]

Great idea. And anyone who opts out should be unable to recieve organs if there is a waiting list (ie - those on the register always get priority), unless there is a valid reason why they can't donate organs (cancer etc.)

Harsh, but why should someone not willing to donate their own organs be able to recieve somebody else's? It would probably make more people willing to donate their own organs anyway.

[midnight marauder]

it strikes me that this would need a lot of political capital to get passed. who in uk politics is backing it right now? it makes a whole lot of sense, but it's very hard to accept from the standpoint of the moderate values that (at least in the US) govern society and politicians.

from that standpoint, it's controversial because it messes with peoples bodies potentially against their will by default. i don't know about elsewhere, but in the states there are a lot of people opposed to organ donation, many for religious reasons such as Jehova's Witnesses, but also for other person reasons which i can't pretend i understand, such as people who would refuse to give their liver to an alcoholic as a part of the sick "reap what you sew" mindset a lot of people have toward drugs and other taboo issues. many people also aren't comfortable giving parts of their bodies to strangers, even when their not alive.

which isn't to say that it shouldn't be passed. millions of people die every year from complications which could have been solved through organ donation, and the number of people that die while on the waiting list for organs is astonishing.

i don't know, though. i always stress that i'm coming from an american point of view, but it seems to me that in western europe people are a lot more rational and sensible when it comes to this sort of thing. it's been passed in spain with great success and in france too, i believe, so who knows? good luck with it.


Harsh, but why should someone not willing to donate their own organs be able to recieve somebody else's? It would probably make more people willing to donate their own organs anyway.

because i don't think someone's right to live their own life is contingent upon them not being stupid. i would be thrilled if when i die my organs get used at all. if they go to someone who isn't an organ donor, then hey, at least i'm saving one life.

[Faux Real]

As juice said, I don't see similar legislation gaining much support here in the States but the positive outweighs the bad for sure. It's also safe to say our health care system would neglect transplants to most who need them, namely low-income citizens. It's a very good idea but until we have some form of socialized medicine it's a longshot.

[PigmerikanMao]

Of course they had some brainless woman from the Evening Standard on TV complaining that it was an 'outrage'.

There always is, it's best to ignore them though.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

The fact is that most people are too busy or lazy to bother signing up to an "opt-in" organ donation program. an "opt-out" scheme would fix this in one fell swoop.


Originally posted by JUICE
from that standpoint, it's controversial because it messes with peoples bodies potentially against their will by default.

If they really care so much, they can opt out. If they're too fucking lazy to do that and still complain they can't really be too bothered about the issue and are just making a fuss for the sake of it. In which case, fuck 'em.

This "opt-out" scheme is by far one of the most sensible proposed schemes to date.

[TC]

I don't have any fundamental objection, on the basis that while everyone has an absolute sovereignty over their body (since they have exclusive legitimate interests in it), no one exists as persons once they're brain dead and non-existent entities cannot have their rights violated, so it should be permissible to do anything to a corpse even without its former owners permission (since they cannot be damaged by it and therefore have no exclusive or, for that matter, any, interest over it).


However...

There are i think some potential practical problems with an opt out rather than an opt in system.


The first is that while a majority of people might be willing to donate their organs in the abstract, i would guess they're probably thinking about their heart, kidneys, liver, etc. Do you think that a majority would actually be willing to donate their eyes, their skin, their hair follicles, and other organs that although medically useful, are used to repair people with non-lethal problems and harvesting them would disfigure the corpse; something to consider in a culture that has open casket funerals.

Worse, consider face transplants, not from the perspective of the organ donor, but for the perspective of the organ donor's family, sexual partners and friends. A lot of people who wouldn't mind supporting an opt-out system if they imaged someone using their kidney after they were dead, would rethink it if they imaged someone using their five year old daughter's face after she was killed in an accident (and too young to be likely interested in checking an opt out).


The second is that if everyone is a presumed organ donor than doctors might have conflicts of interest. If a homeless person ends up in the hospital with a fatal but potentially treatable acute illness (say with an uncertain prognosis), and the hospital has a well off and popular patient with a chronic illness who needs an organ transplant, then the doctors treating both might very well *hope* the homeless person dies, and this could obviously negatively impact on their treatment and how much of an effort is made to save them. In fact given that each organ donor corpse represents two kidneys, a liver that can be sectioned, and a heart, each dead organ donor saves at least six other patients; a doctor interested in saving lives might logically allow one patient to die to save six, whereas he or she would be killing six if they managed to save the one. Obviously this would be illegal and never publicly recognized but given that the medical profession encourages and in some ways requires that doctors dehumanize their patients, see them as bodies and collections of body parts and not people (understandable given the emotional impact on them otherwise) its not hard to think that some doctors would do this either deliberately or unconciously.


The last problem is that organ donation is blind charity without knowing who would be the recipient. Frankly, if i knew that my organs would be used to save American soldiers coming back from Iraq, or allow them to see or walk again, then i'd want to opt out since i wouldn't want them to benefit from it.

[Outmoded]

Frankly, I find your assumptions very disturbing.

1) You seem to think that the government would ever allow use of outward organs from the dead for cosmetic or non-lifesaving surgery with an opt-out system? What's more, what makes you think that we could not simply state what organs we would wish to donate? External organs, dermis and hair would only be open for donation if the donor gave their expressed permission whilst alive or in their will.

No government, no matter how totalitarian, would risk the outright controversy of simply 'harvesting' the dead of every useful body part, then burying the leftovers. What's more, in the hypothetical scenario of the young girl - I would assume the parents would have chosen, as custodians, to take temporary custody of her body after death is respect to donations.

Also, it would take a serious stretch of the imagination for a child recieving a face transplant to bear any form of similarity to the original donor - you need to take into consideration their own bone structure, muscle tissue and such.

2) You are insinuating institutionalised murder. Even for the NHS, you're jumping headfirst into the worst-case scenario. It would take a person with a sociopathic or otherwise dangerous state of mind to callously kill a patient in order to 'free up' useful organs. Obviously, psychiatric evaluations are in place to ensure that surgeons and other practicioners are fit to work.

3) What you're essentially saying is that you'd let people you'd otherwise get along with die just because of the conflict they are participating in? So what if we took this further? White supremacists denying their organs to all but other whites? Catholics refusing to donate to homosexuals?

You sicken me - to be able to callously deny the gift of life to another all because of your beliefs.