Surely you are aware of how easily a database error can occur. There is **plenty ** to worry about in this type of system, especially if you’re name is John Smith, Ganesh Singh, Anh Nguyen, or Pedro Gonzales.
Well, obviously, any national Register - be it of donors or anti-donors - is going to have more information than just your name. Information that would lead to, in most cases, a positive ID. No positive ID, no takee organs. No problem.
Here’s another concept.
Let’s have it assumed that on death, every person will donate their estate to the federal government out of interest to better the nation.
The concept of a “free nation” means that people won’t always do the “morally right thing.” That is the inherent risk of that thing called “freedom.” Forcing people to give up their freedom in the interest of a supposed moral choice
Whoops, didn’t finish that 
Forcing people to give up their freedom in the interest of a supposed moral choice, even if they can opt out of it, is against the very principal of a free nation.
Why not assume that people are going to vote for the incumbant?
We don’t let dead people vote…
I guess the question is the rights of the deceased - any rights one has while alive are irrelevant. Are all the rights immediately transfered to the next-of-kin, or should other factors prevail?
I think opt-out would be a great idea. Liver failure is a horrible way to die and it is tragic that so many suffer and die while perfectly good organs go to waste simply because the deceased never bothered to get on the organ donor registry.
I don’t think that an opt-out system would infringe on rights as long as the choice was there for everyone. The best analogy I can think of would be to CPR and “do not resuscitate” orders. Much like organ donation, CPR is a potentially traumatic procedure to perform on a body (broken ribs and brain damage from oxygen deprivation, for example), but yet it makes sense for hospitals to assume that you don’t have a strong aversion to CPR if you haven’t made your wishes known by getting a DNR. Likewise, I think it makes sense for hospitals to assume that if you haven’t made your wishes to avoid donating organs known, you don’t have a strong aversion to it.
The important thing is to give everyone a choice to opt out.
Increasingly hard to play devil’s advocate here, but here goes… Sorry if it is half-assed.
Having your life saved and having your eyeballs ripped out can’t be placed side by side and considered the same thing.
There is no social or legal precedent to require you to save someone’s life. If someone is on fire, you aren’t required to put them out - and the law does not assume that you would. Neither does it assume anything. You have to make a conscious choice to do something in the eyes of the law. The first time someone slipped up and someone had their eyes removed, or an individual was a John/Jane Doe, or was not informed of the practice (however silly that may seem), there would be legal hell to pay from the family of the deceased.
Secondly, many (most?) organs aren’t removed and stored in vaults for years and years to be used at convenience. They have a relatively short life (er, death) span - generally, if a match happens to be found at the right place at the right time, there is a hell of a rush to get it to someone it can save. With the proposed system, there would be a vast surplus of available material that would not only swamp the system and possibly lead to more errors in transplants, but result in much waste.
Thirdly, paranoid as it may seem, doctors assuming that a patient will donate may be more likely to declare that patient dead in the interest of getting at a specific organ they need. In fact, this is a major cause of people to NOT donate organs. The last thing we need is more people being paranoid of the process.
What is needed is more education about the process or possibly rewards for donating.
It’s just awful, horrible, AGONISING that that little one year old girl died for want of a heart donor, and of course it’s hugely awful and appalling and heart-rending whenever it happens to anyone.
Assuming that the argument for personal freedom from this opt-out scheme stands, if it really HAS to be an opt-in scheme instead I hope the advertising gets a lot stronger. No more abstracts - I want minute-long interviews with bereaved parents, spouses, children. Relatives of those who died for want of a transplant organ, as well as those who survived because of one.
I’m sure I remember hearing something recently about how even if one carries a donor card, one’s family may decide to refuse. It seems to be argued (here at least) that carrying the donor card and talking to your family about it is a way of convincing your family NOT to withhold that permission when the time comes.
If it is in any way defensible to reduce civil liberties in the name of the current “war against terror”, is it not at least as defensible to do it in the name of the “war against premature death”?
That is assuming that it is defensible to deny rights for the “war on terror.” I don’t see how that enters into it in any case whatsoever - otherwise, the “war on terror” will be used to justify removing civil liberties of every type. What’s next, censorship of anti-government ideas? I mean, after all, it is alright, because other liberties have been curtailed. How about a law forcing you to act to save someone’s life? Would that lead to justified murders? Is it also not agonizing that thousands of children die of starvation every day? Should there be a law that forces us to give them food? In the “war against premature death”, would insurance companies be legally responsible for not distributing medicine to every person, whether they could afford it or not? Why not assume that everyone wants to donate their body to medical science. After all, that can help to save other people’s lives, in an indirect way.
That was why I said “if” it’s defensible. Someone clearly thinks it is. And I’m not entirely happy that the next step after a donor opt-out system is the censorship of anti-government ideas.
I don’t know, but is that in itself a reason not to have such a law? And anyway what’s the good samaritan law? I always thought it did demand such actions but I may be wrong going by what you’ve said - could someone elucidate?
Well… now you come to mention it… I wouldn’t mind hearing the arguments against that, too…
No idea. Don’t know anything about insurance, being the relatively healthy product of a socialised medical service, but I certainly think pharmaceutical companies should be legally (and morally) responsible for hampering distribution of medicine to those it could help in the name of profit.
Not a bad idea. Not that I know anything about that either.
It’s just that… what argument is there for denying the opt-out position that does not involve the symbolic withholding of life-giving organs for the sake of proving a point? Don’t get me wrong, freedom and self-determination are IMPORTANT… but these deaths are pretty real too. Are there figures on how many actually die annually for want of a donor? That might make things clearer.
Awesome idea, I think. Those that are opposed to it can opt out, or their families can speak up and keep it from happening.
I think it sucks that the dead person’s family can stop organ harvesting even if they said they wanted it 
(At least they can around here …)
It seems so silly to me to die and take your organs with you for no reason.
Aha Zagadka! Your efforts (admirable as they were) at playing devils advocate have led you full circle! The OP in a nutshell!
~ Pets fluffy white cat ~
hehe. Yea, well, I give up. I can only think of so many reasons why someone would be opposed to this, and I don’t want to start repeating the same arguments over and over again. Unfortunately, I think that most people who read these forums are fairly educated, and are educated enough to be pro-donorship. I don’t know if we’ll find many people who would protest this too much, which is sad, because that is what we need for a debate. I just hate when things are one sided.
shrugs
I’d like to hear from, though, a) a lawyer re: good samaritan laws, and b) a doctor, re: shelf life of implants.
As a person awaiting a transplant, I am naturally very much in favour of the opt out system.
I have always been in favour of organ donation and I think approaching relatives for permission at the time of death, more often than not result in refusals.
Unfortunately there are precious few willing to donate.
Unfortunately there are precious few willing to donate.
WHY are they so unwilling, though?
Is it because they’re too lazy to sign their driver’s license and tell their family?
Does the thought of having their organs harvested bother them?
Are they just not educated as to HOW MANY lives they could save?
I can understand not doing it for religious reasons but I can’t understand the “I just don’t want to” reasoning.
In the one situation I have detailed knowledge of, the discussion with the family over organ donation was done while the patient was still on life-support, once it was clear that recovery was possible. That way it was possible to arrange the logistics of making use of the organs, contacting potential receivers etc., before the machines were switched off. There was no reason for a doctor to declare the patient dead before rushing into organ issues.
In the United States, you can sign all the organ-donor cards you want, tell everyone you know you want to be a donor, and when you die (assuming you die in a manner that allows for organ donation) the docs will still go to your family and ask for permission – and if the family says no, the donation doesn’t happen.
But let’s clear up a few things, shall we? First of all, not eveyone is eligible to donate, no matter how sincere their design to do so. Certain diseases - such as HIV, HepC, or CJD - means you can’t donate because you’d pass the disease to the recipent. Cancer patients can not donate (except for maybe corneas). Very old people can’t donate. People have volunteered to donate, then during the “harvesting” sometimes they’re found to have undiagnosed kidney disease or something that eliminates their organs.
Second, your death has to meet certain requirements. Ideally, an organ donor is a young, healthy person with a massive, massive head injury. A gunshot wound to the abdomen might well eliminate your kidneys and liver from the list of donor candidates. So, ironically, as we reduce deaths from trauma we also reduce the pool of available organs for transplant. It’s not enough to simply be healthy, you have to die in the proper way(s).
Third, even if all potential donor organs could be harvested it still would not solve the problem of people dying while waiting for an organ. You can’t just randomly transplant anyone’s organ into anyone else - it has to be matched for immune capatibility, blood type, and size. The heart of 6 foot tall 40 year old man may be a perfect immunilogical match for a 7 year old girl, but it’s too big to fit inside her and thus can’t be used by her. Some people are very difficult to match immunologically. Some are difficult to match because of their size. So even if we could “harvest” all usable organs, there’s no guarantee we’d be able to match them all to needy patients, or that all needy patients would find a match.
Fourth, if you want to be an organ donor you don’t have to wait until you’re dead. Blood is an organ, and you can donate it while still upright and mobile. If you’re really gonzo on the idea you can also donate bone marrow or even a kidney while still alive.
I guess what I’m trying to say here is that while the presumptive donor idea has merit, please do not think it will solve the entire problem.
Also true in the UK.
Actual experience of the Spanish opt-out system would suggest otherwise:
http://www.worldtravelcenter.com/jetstream/newsweather/newsletter/Aug00/organ.htm
I think perhaps one of the things that’s made the issue such a hot potato in the UK was a recent scandal wherein a children’s hospital (I think) was found to have been removing organs from loads and loads of cadavers, the bodies then being handed over to relatives for the burial or whatever. This was a huge story a while back, and lots of relatives went through new ceremonies of funerals and such. I don’t remember whether any of the organs were actually reburied alongside the original corpse, I think they may well have been. And I don’t remember particular religious issues coming up then either, it was lots of bereaved families just very upset that their relatives’ bodies were faffed about with.
Not to downplay the feelings of the bereaved at having their losses needlessly rekindled, but after a while I started to think “let it go, stop torturing yourself.” Probably there were threads about it on here. I think it was a hospital called “Alder Hey”.
Alder Hey is in Liverpool, so there will have probably been a fair bit of religious issues over the organ retention, having a large Catholic population.
I agree that the reactions seemed over the top. Claiming that it was traumatic - how? The process of second and third funerals seemed to me to be farcical. But then again, the religious issues aren’t something I can empathise with - when I die, I’m going to rot away, and that’s it.