TirithRR wrote:
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.
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...