Presumed consent for organsFollow

No, they should reverse the act that allowed people to find out who their sperm donar father was and go and find them. My wife is Atheist but doesn't want to donate her organs, she wants to be buried whole, I know alot of people like that.

For myself, I think I'd be more let down if the government said "we're just going to assume you don't mind us harvesting your organs, whether you like it or not".

On a non-Python related note, I think organ donation is one of those things that one should have to opt in to, rather than out of.

Edited, Nov 17th 2008 8:05am by Natdatilgnome

By the time the will is read that organ would be unusable. I suppose the fact that it's a good tissue match would help; but what if it isn't?

On the other hand people obviously have donated kidneys and what not to relatives without dying to precipitate that; so I assume if you know you're going to die fairly soon you can let your doctor know your wishes, get the tissue matching done ahead of time, and then he or she can arrange the, er, transfer.

Timing is so important - the logistics of postmortem donation are horrendous enough without complicating it all further.

I think I agree mostly with this. I think the best option (for any and everywhere pretty much) would be an aggressive campaign to register more WILLING donors. I'm actually not sure if I'm currently registered as a donor, but I'm certain I won't be needing any of my organs or eyeballs after I die, so if someone else can use them I guess why not?

Am I the only one who can't help but picture Eric Idle singing when this subject comes up?

There should be no fucking "consent" required as to the method of disposal of your useless meatsack when you die. It's great though, that the masses attachment to their relatives dead flesh combined with their belief in the magic jew in the sky directly lead to the deaths of thousands of people yearly.

I think there are a lot of people out there that believe if they do make their organs available to donate, that somehow the first responders will do less in the cases of critical, near death accidents, in order to get more organs for other people. That they would rush decisions in order to save the potential organs and make decisions based on the welfare of the organs rather than the welfare of the human in question.

Hey, if the state wants to agree to my funeral terms, they can do whatever they want. So long as there's other people willing to give me a fancier burial than the county is, those folks get first crack at what happens to me

I think there are a lot of people out there that believe if they do make their organs available to donate, that somehow the first responders will do less in the cases of critical, near death accidents, in order to get more organs for other people. That they would rush decisions in order to save the potential organs and make decisions based on the welfare of the organs rather than the welfare of the human in question.

Those people are colloquially referred to around these parts as "Fucking Fools". Easy solution, though, EMTs need to start actively slaying non organ donors as soon they establish it's the case. Problem solved. ****, why aren't I Dictator yet? I could make the world so much better of a place in no time at all.

I think it's a stupid decision not to implement presumed consent. If you're uneasy with the idea of having your organs donated, you opt-out. It's really not that complicated. If you don't care or are happy to do it, then you don't do anything. And it's not like those organs go to people who could do without them, they save lives. Like super-heroes.

And for those of us that have trouble doing good things while we're alive, at least we get to do good things when we're dead.

If it's so easy to "opt out" if you don't want it, then why would it be so hard to "opt in" if you do? The focus is being put in the wrong area here. Spend more time educating the people about their options (and getting them to sign a card or the license) rather than changing the law to just assume they say Yes.

The last million years of human behavior leads us to conclude that counting on people to do the right thing if it requires absolutely any effort on their part is a fools errand.

No, change the law. Most people are too lazy to bother opting in. It's much more effective if the default position is "yes". And it's not like there's such a huge demand for organs that every dead person will be looted and scrapped of his every organ. In the UK, around 7000 people are on the waiting list for an organ. Half of those won't get one. So there's a need for 3000 organs or so, it's not gigantic. Not only that, but a lot of people who die are not healthy enough to give organs: some livers/lungs/hearts are far too damaged to be of much use. So the nightmare scenarion that people have of being scavenged when they die in order to allow some fat, smoking, bed-ridden alcoholic a few more months to live his unhealthy life is *********

I'm more than happy to allow for some exceptions on religious grounds, or to allow parents of kids to decide whether their child is a donor or not. It doesn't have to be a **** law, but increasing the potential pool of organ donors is a simple, cheap measure that would save hundreds of lives every year in the UK, without costing anyone anything.

On a related note: Mother-of-two becomes first transplant patient to receive an organ grown to order in a laboratory. So one day, this debate might be moot. But until then...

You still have presumed consent to sell the organs on the black market of the annoyingly loud at 3 am next door neighbor who mysteriously went missing on a previous night at approximatly 3 am when I was sound asleep and couldn't possibly have had anything to do with their dissappearance right?