Are there any well-reasoned numbers on how many lives would be saved if the US went to an opt-out organ donation system like some other countries have? What are the commonly cited reasons not to do this?
I don’t know how “commonly cited” they are, but reasons I’m against:
It’s morally wrong to just switch to “opt-out” when you’re not getting your way on an opt-in system. All it does is catch people who forget, don’t get around to it, don’t know they have to opt out or even die before they get around to opting out.
It makes bodily integrity something you have to say you want, rather than being automatically entitled to it.
It will force people who want nothing to do with organ donation to carry around details of that fact, an inconvenience they shouldn’t be put to.
We have such a system here in Singapore (Malays are exempted though).
Not sure on how you would go about finding numbers, but the expereince here is that it has worked well, and there have been no issues whatsoever with it’s implementation.
I am a proponent of opt-out organ donation, but not over the objections of family if the deceased’s intentions are not clear.
Would your concerns be sufficiently addressed by either of these situations?
a) Starting opt-out with driver’s licenses applied for after a certain date, so that every one who went through the license paperwork would have the opportunity to opt out before being opted in by default.
or
b) Having DL paperwork that did not allow a default - applications without an “Organ Donation: Y/N” preference would be returned as incomplete.
By the time they are considering removing your organs, I would say that your body’s integrity has failed pretty convincingly. If opting in or out is noted on your driver’s license, I can’t see how either way would be an inconvenience.
Both of these beg the question of whether you should have a right to specify what happens to your body after you die. Traditionally society has tried to respect the wishes of the deceased on a “best effort” basis. Wills are followed for disposal of property, and requests for specific funeral arrangements are sometimes respected – but with lots of exceptions for each to achieve public policy goals. If the deceased dispossessed his wife in his will, or requested a sky burial in the middle of town, those requests would usually not be granted.
It’s entirely reasonable to say that when you are dead, you have no right to the pile of valuable meat you leave behind. You can make requests about what will be done with it, and people will try to be accommodating if the requests aren’t too inconvenient, but that’s not the same thing as you having a right to have your body disposed of the way you would have wanted.
No. Why? Because NOTHING will make opting out easier than just not opting in. Why should those of us with no interest in organ donation have to do anything? The system works fine as it is: if YOU care, YOU do the work.
@ Leahcim - it’s not reasonable at all. “Don’t mutilate my body” is not an expensive or difficult request.
The system does not work fine as it is for those people who die because they did not receive organs. For those people (and for those providing for them – say the cost of a kidney dialysis machine over many years), granting the request is expensive and difficult.
Then I propose that anyone not opting is never allowed on the transplant list; if you cared, you should have become a donor yourself (before needing an organ that is).
There are some religions that prescribe that the body be interred whole. How would you reconcile an opt out organ donation policy to the 1st amendment right to freedom of religion? A right is not something to be opted into. It is, according to the US Constitution, guaranteed.
FTR, I am an organ donor. I am also a Constitution supporter.
That IS the system working fine. People who want to help can do so extremely easily, and people who don’t don’t have to do anything. That’s the system working perfectly. The fact there aren’t enough donors to meet demand doesn’t mean opt-in isn’t working, it means not enough people want to be donors. Changing to opt-out might indeed trick some people into “donating” when they didn’t want to, but that doesn’t make it okay.
Why? Why should people be extorted/blackmailed into agreeing to something they may be vehemently against, for a myriad of reasons?
It is if there is someone who would benefit greatly from us mutilating your body. Then you’re weighing the cost of offense to someone who is dead against a real benefit to someone who is living. My point is that the “rights of the dead” we observe are more traditions than actual rights.
[QUOTE=Doctor Jackson]
There are some religions that prescribe that the body be interred whole. How would you reconcile an opt out organ donation policy to the 1st amendment right to freedom of religion? A right is not something to be opted into. It is, according to the US Constitution, guaranteed.
[/QUOTE]
Guaranteed to living persons, not corpses. A corpse is guaranteed nothing under the constitution. There are traditional ways we behave towards corpses (e.g. disposing of them the way their former occupants “would have wanted”) but nothing that has the force of constitutional law.
I’d be fine with that. I don’t want my body hacked up for organs after I die, but I won’t accept any organs either. I figure if my heart, kidney, whatever decides to go that’s a good sign that it’s “my time”.
You may be right legally, I have no idea. Morally, hell no. This isn’t just about “the rights of the dead”, it’s about a decision people make before they die. The fact they’re dead doesn’t change the reasons they did or didn’t want their organs to be distributed.
I agree.
Morally, I have no problem with it. Actions are moral or immoral only to the extent that they can affect positively or negatively affect people. If you are dead, no action can affect you at all, much less affect you so negatively that it overwhelms the positive effect an organ donation has on someone else.
There are some religions that forbide their followers from serving in the military, but the draft was never something you “opted in” to. You had to “opt out” by going before a tribunal and prove you were a conscientious objector. What the OP is suggesting is basically that “conscientious objectors” to organ donation be granted that status automatically by filing a form.
Just because you’re dead doesn’t mean Earthly matters stop mattering. The world goes on without you, you know. I know I’m going to die some day, but I don’t limit myself to caring what happens to people and the world only while I’m on it. That’s why we have wills - because people SHOULD be entitled to decide how their death will affect the world. Money, possessions, valuable or junk - and definitely their organs.
Certainly, and most of the time people respect the deceased’s opinions to an extent, but not universally.
Again, even just looking at wills, people and the legal system usually respect wills. But if you completely disinherit your spouse leaving him/her destitute, in a lot of jurisdictions the legal system is going to step in and say, “no, the spouse gets a share”. You are given a lot of control over what happens when you die, but not complete control. Organ donation might simply be one of those areas you have no control over.
I know nothing about the law. I don’t care about laws, only what’s right. If what you’re saying about disinheritance is true, that’s fucking sick and disgusting. But it currently ISN’T true regarding organ theft, and we should be doing all we can to make sure it doesn’t become true.
The 1st amendment right of free practice of religion would apply to the living relatives of the deceased, not the corpse. An example would be forcing a surviving spouse to bury a “less than whole” body in violation of their religious bleliefs. Also, since organ harvesting is time critical, there may not be time to contact the next of kin to determine whether the deceased had opted out.
Speaking of which - if I got hit by a bus on my way home today and didn’t have my opt in/out card, how would the organ harvesters know whether they could or couldn’t?