Can "Opt-Out" Organ Donation Law be the Solution?

I know quite a few people who do not want to donate their organs due to religious reasons – essentially that you have to return the body complete or your afterlife deposit is lost.

In my case, I have too many health problems, basically listing my organs as garbage. Lovely.

I think it's a good idea.

I get where they're coming from, so many people go without needed organ transplants when theoretically there's no need to. I think rather than opt-out, it'd be better if it was a "we need a yes or no on file". That way you'd have to say whether or not you want to donate rather than a voluptuary out in or out.

Excellent idea, and I hope they introduce this in Australia. Those people who don't want to donate for religious reasons are free to opt out, and if they never get around to it, their family can opt out for them.

In Massachusetts when you renew your drivers license you have the option of being an organ donor. It gets put right on your drivers license. In my case I have lupus and my organs are junk too.

I can tell you exactly how this would play out in the U.S.:

"This law must not go through! Doctors will no longer try to save the lives of the ill and injured, instead just using patients for their parts! Emergency rooms will become ORGAN FARMS!! WARRRBLARGL!"

And, Jan, it's not lupus.

@ Wes
Nah- there's far more money to be made sustaining
vegetative patients waay past their due date, then
harvesting organs afterwards.
Down with corpsicles! Demand more money/research for growing custom organs! Contact your bought & paid for
Congressman today!

I (and my family) strongly support organ donation. I have let my family know my wishes and have it identified on my drivers license.

However, I completely disagree with this plan. It makes an assumption that our bodies are a resource of the state to be disposed of according to the state's wishes. I find that really, really problematic.

Amen, liberty. Couldn't have said it better.

I understand what they are saying and if people wish to donate their organs then good for them. I just don't care for it. When I die, everything is going with me. It's my body and I am going to take it with me since I can't take my money. I feel sorry for anybody who is sick and needs a transplant, but I just don't want my organs in someone else's body, sorry. I hope my fellow countrymen think very carefully before agreeing to this.

Everyone declaring this to be a good idea are free to get themselves a donor card. They are not free to force such a rule onto others; not individually nor through government. I reserve to myself ownership over my body without having to petition government. I likewise reserve to myself the right to decide what happens with the remains of my next of kin should they decease, unless they themselves declared otherwise. I will not tolerate any stranger, even if he be an officeholder, claiming those remains before me. Wirting such an unjust claim into law would not change a wrong into a right, but rather discredit the lawmakers.

By arrogating to itself the monopoly over donor organs, government created the donor-organ shortage. The solution is breaking the monopoly, e.g. through voluntary programs like LifeSharers or even through lifting government's ban on the dead-donor market. More government is not the solution. It is the problem.

Actually the main problem is safer cars. Fewer fatal accidents = fewer organ donors.

@observer: You could always decree that the money you have is to be spent on the most opulent, tasteless funeral, gold coffins and all. That way you CAN take it with you.

@jpj: And Everyone declaring this to be a bad idea are free to opt out.

@nihil it's a nice idea to have a yes or no on file, but the difficult is getting people to put anything on file. Research has shown that many people support the idea of organ donation, but have never got round to filling in the form (not that it's much of a form) and carrying the card. Thus the idea of the opt out system.

@Wes maybe you were being ironic that doesn't really make sense does it. Why let a patient die who you could otherwise have saved in order to save another patient who would otherwise die. Organ transplants can be a fairly risky business, they are certainly not a guaranteed cure, they are also very complex and expensive operations with a lot of expensive aftercare. So no doctor is going to say "This guy would die if we didn't stem the bleeding and give him a transfusion, but hey there's a patient waiting for a heart transplant in another hospital and this guy would match. There's only a 50% chance of that working long term, but let's go for the transplant."

That law already exists in Portugal. For years, now!! Please get better sources.

@ Jolly....they ask us in both IN and FL "Do you want to be an organ donor?" In order to get your license. If you want to drive a car, you give an answer.

I think the fear Wes is speaking to is the fact that doctors are human, and they just might not strive as hard for the jerk that throws his bedpan at the nurses, and instead focus on the little girl dying of liver cancer. Probably not really very likely due to lawsuits and such, but definitely a fear that's out there.

Screw those quack doctors and their quack medicine. They like things like putting your guts into someone else so they will have to take a bunch of drugs the rest of their life. They can't get money to research real health solutions because that wouldn't make anyone rich. I'll opt out thank you.

Ask yourself why we (Americans) spend more on health care than anyone else in the world, but are a bunch of sick, fat, drug addicts while everyone even remotely involved in the health care profession (no matter how unhealthy they are) just keep getting richer.

@observer - Yeah, the worms will really appreciate your gesture. A lot more than some person at death's door.

I agree with this, and it's actually a proposed law where I live too.
I think that another thing should be added: if you opt aout from organ donation, you should not be elegible for organ transplant in case you need to.

What goes unmentioned is the fact that your family gets stuck with the bill if it turns out that your organs aren't good enough to be donated.

All the time and resources keeping the body in good enough shape until the hospital is ready to remove the organs are billed to the family of the deceased if it turns out that the organs aren't acceptable. So, on top of your family mourning their incredible loss and stressing about the medical bills that have already accrued, they are told "thanks for signing up to be a donor but it didn't work out so now you owe us an additional $200k."

seeing that so many people are homeless, they should reassign our houses to others by default unless of course we "opt out" of this (every 12 hours). i wonder what that would be like...

Opt-in or opt-out, there are far, far too few people that die under the "right" circumstances for this to have any effect at all on, say, kidney donations. It's not even a drop in the bucket.

Live donations are the only answer, in the short run. Making it legal to compensate live donors for their organs is the only practical solution that could help people right away. As it is, everyone - doctors, nurses, hospitals - gets paid *except* the donor because people think there has to be some kind of noble sacrifice involved for donation to be moral.

In the long run, vat-grown organs.

I think it's a good idea. I'm a donor and wish more people were.
If I ever needed a transplant, I would hope there was something available to help save my life. Just like whenever I die, I hope that some part of my body can help save someone else.
I'm going to be dead, what the hell do I need my body for any longer.

Terrible idea, I'll never understand why people are so willing to give the government more power over their lives.

That being said, aside from religious reasons, I cannot fathom why anybody wouldn't be a donor. When I die, hack me apart and use anything that'll help somebody who is living. Best case scenario, somebody gets my eyes or my liver and I eventually possess them.

@nihil: "I think rather than opt-out, it'd be better if it was a 'we need a yes or no on file'."

Sure, but what do they do when someone dies and there's NOT a yes or no on file? That's what determines whether it's an opt-in or opt-out system.

@B.M. We'll see if your answer changes when you're facing death because no one will donate a kidney.

I have to agree with the idea, because I find the idea of graveyards wasteful and I don't think we should be burying our dead anyways. Harvest what you can, and incinerate the rest. Or, what I would love to do, is donate my corpse to science or a Body Farm. That'd be awesome.

But, it probably won't happen, because since I live so far north, I've been told by the local docs that signing a donor card is pretty pointless, as they wouldn't be able to transport my body to the nearest capable hospital for organ harvesting in time for them to be viable. :\

>> "This law must not go through! Doctors will no longer try to save the lives of the ill and injured, instead just using patients for their parts!"

When there is a shortage this creates a huge incentive to break the law.
When there is a surplus exactly the opposite occurs.

>> "It's my body and I am going to take it with me since I can't take my money."

With all due respect but this makes absolutely no sense. Do you even realize how ridiculous this sounds?

>> "aside from religious reasons, I cannot fathom why anybody wouldn't be a donor"

Amen to that.

@observer you're going to take it with you where? If you're religious then almost all religions tell you your corporeal remains do not go with you to the next life. If you're an athiest then you know that when you die that's all there is. Lights out. No more. Game over.

Oh and if you're agnostic you don't care enough anyway.

But to you, jpj and the other selfish goons I still don't see your problem. If you care enough to have that attitude then all you have to do is opt out. Simple.

i know that in California you have to pay a fee if you opt out of being a donor when you get your license or ID.

When it comes to the US, stuff that gets passed that doesn't have an obvious target in mind usually means that it is benefiting a corporation or very influence people.

So whenever I see something that says you have to Opt Out/In and it's contrary to what the majority of people believe/want....I question it's motives and then like to see where the same thinking in other circumstances are scoffed at.

Do Not Call List, why must I Opt In to not be bothered on the phone needlessly? Why are they now trying to make it so these same people can call my cell phone number? Why do I have a sneaking suspicion this list is used as a verification list to weed out useless numbers?

Organ Donations, Why do I need to pay to opt out?

Why would you assume that I want my organs to potentially go to the person who ran me down in the street?

Why is it OK for me to be auto opt-in on organ donation, but I can't get universal health coverage to keep said organs healthy?

Why do I have a sneaking suspicion that this law/rule benefits very rich people who have the wealth to pay for these transplants?

How did Steve Jobs get a transplant at his age and with his additional health problems? (answer to this is Money, don't bother arguing it).

So why is it OK for rich folks to use the normal folks as organ donators, while the normal folk can't depend on the rich to get universal healthcare in place?

Where's the 'social contract' that everyone gets taken care of because we can?

It's OK to harvest from people who hit the "genetic" and "life" lottery to get a healthy body, but it's not OK to expect the people who hit the "financial success" or "rich family" lottery to pay more into the system because they can.

1) If Im paying throughout my life to maintain my health through medications, treatments, doctors, hospitals, surgery, etc. to maintain healthy transplantable organs.....Opting in with stipulations should be completely acceptable. IE My age or younger, non-wealthy individual with non-wealthy family (no line skippers due to wealth/influence). OR Rich person gets it, once my family is paid 10% of his total wealth or 10 million (whichever is higher) before the procedure so him dieing on the table can't affect the payment.

My problem with this idea is the following: Should a stranger really have the right to interfere with the grieving family of a deceased person and claim the body, and the family members that attempt to obstruct should be punished?

It seems to me that all proponents of this idea have to impliciltly presume at least one of the two following: First, that "opt-out" be as moral as "opt-in". But both rules are mutually exclusive, so only one can be moral. Which one can be answered by asking whom our bodies belong to. Second, you may believe that moral rules can simply be legislated into and out of existance. Of the many points to be raised against this notion let me just state one: if that be so, for what do we still need a conscience?

The solution to the donor organ shortage is not more arbitratry rules by government, but less: destroy the government's monopoly and get government out of people's way who voluntarily find dead-donor agreements.

Lastly, let us not discredit our arguments by name-calling others as "selfish goons".

I am continually amazed at some people's lack of reading comprehension. Forget the preface that introduced my post and the quotation marks around the subsequent argument; did people actually think I would end an argument I myself was making with "WARRRBLARGL"?

In Texas, it used to be printed on our drivers' licenses. They would ask you when you'd go to renew. Then, around 2000 or so, they stopped doing that, and instead you had to fill out an organ donor card and put a sticker on the face of the license itself. The sticker almost immediately came loose, when you took your license out of your wallet, and was an enormous pain. I finally emailed Texas DPS and asked why they no longer asked at the license bureau, and actually got an answer: people apparently were complaining that they felt "coerced." Just by being asked whether or not they wanted to be a donor.

Now, Texas has gone to a system where they ask if you want to be a donor, and that information is coded into the magnetic strip on the license (but I carry a donor card too, just to be sure). I used to be rather lukewarm with regard to organ donation, and then I read a book called "From Death To Dust" by Kenneth Iserson, that made me a true believer.

The most powerful weapon we have is education. People are woefully ignorant about organ donation. A friend of mine used to swear up and down that "everybody knows" that if you're an organ donor, the paramedics won't really try to save you.

I guess the bottom line is that I think an opt-out system is an excellent idea.

@Liberty, I hadn't thought of it that way, but you've got a point.

P.S. I do think that declared organ donors ought to be given priority if they themselves need an organ.

@Blah the law is for Wales which, like the rest of the UK, has the national health service. A state health service and the donation register applies to the NHS - not private medicine. As such your comments about people who are rich enough to afford transplants are irrelevant. Nobody is talking about this law in the US AFAIA so there's little point in discussing it as if they were.

And as for the question "Why do I need to pay to opt out?" well you don't. You pay your contributions to the NHS through your taxes as normal you don't pay more if you opt out of organ donation.

"Why is it OK for me to be auto opt-in on organ donation, but I can't get universal health coverage to keep said organs healthy?" In the UK there is universal health coverage, funded through taxes so the poor pay less than the rich. But of course US citizens apparently don't want that sort of system.

"How did Steve Jobs get a transplant at his age and with his additional health problems?" Well if he lived in the UK he'd have been just as likely to get it as anybody else.

"So why is it OK for rich folks to use the normal folks as organ donators, while the normal folk can't depend on the rich to get universal healthcare in place?" I think you know the answer to that. The US is a state where most people didn't want a system that would present exactly what you're talking about.

@nonomonomys

from the Mayo clinic website:

Myth: My family will be charged if I donate my organs.
Fact: The organ donor's family is never charged for donating. The family is charged for the cost of all final efforts to save your life, and those costs are sometimes misinterpreted as costs related to organ donation. Costs for organ removal go to the transplant recipient.