Welsh presumed consent organ donation

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I wonder what folk think of this?

http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/healt ... ed-9623708
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Tra ... 9_Act_2013

It is a system that has been in place in Belgium since the 80s.

Brilliant. What do you need your organs for if you're dead?

I have been saying that opt-out for organ donation is a lot better than opt-in; a lot of people are not registered simply becouse they can't be bothered to, opt-out will include those people in the pool automatically: the amount of donors will instantly double, if not triple.
Those who are opposed to donating (for whatever reason) still don't have to: they can opt out.


I have even heared of something going even further: you must be a registred donor in order to recieve organs yourself (either opted in or not have opted out, that's the same effect), which will also make more people either opt in or chose not to opt out.


in short: when is this coming to where i live? (yes, i am a registrerd, card-carrying donor, they may take everything they can use)

I have the sticker on my ID, I made this decision of my own free will and fruition. All you do here in this country is check a box when your at the DMV. I find this "presumed consent" to be troubling because essentially hospital/state can just take ownership of your body when you die never mind the wishes of your next of kin, I get that less people will probably opt-out than opt-in but perhaps they should be made to declare their preference instead of "presuming" anything, that way it best represents the wishes of the people. Belgium is not a country I want to model myself after in any way.

My only objection is that it gives the state authority over your body parts. I am against the state having the ability to treat human cadavers as mere meat.

It opens the door to all sorts of murky behaviors. I prefer reverence for the dead. I also prefer it if the state would not PRESUME anything. The idea that I am to be used for spare parts should require explicit consent. Otherwise, that leads to the possibility of tweaking the definition of death. Does brain dead count as dead? etc.

What is interesting is the statistics

http://ec.europa.eu/health/blood_tissue ... res_en.pdf

https://nhsbtdbe.blob.core.windows.net/ ... /wales.pdf

Wales has a population of 3 million. Belgium has a population of 11 million. Wales is also able to source organ form the rest of the UK and there a Europe wide list I think.

What difference does consent make in terms of you being really dead?

I share your concerns. The Welsh legislation does involve the relatives in the decision to remove organs. How it will work in pratice remains to be seen.

The other think is it is yet to be seen if this actually makes a differnce. Quite often there is a perceived differnce, but the situation is more complex than people might realise.

Only with actual figure could you know

Would it be a better idea to ask when you register to vote?

It can also be reconfirmed each time. I regularly have to reconfirm for the electoral roll,

The down side is this information shouldn't be stored in the same place, it shouldn't be stored with the electoral roll. It need to be a tear off that can reach the donor list.

The plus is they have you NI / Social Security number. So they can confirm address, social security number and name.

It doesn't help with organs for children, which is a tough subject anyway.

As a Welshman, I fully support the Welsh Assembly's deemed consent policy. If anyone does not like the idea they can opt out, there is only a limited time after death to harvest organs and time wasted dealing with families of people who are not on the register results in other people dying needlessly.

My family are fully aware of my thoughts on this subject, I will not need my body when I die so if someone can get some use out of it, great. That's why I have chosen that after organ harvest the rest goes to science. I quite like the idea of being used to train the next set of doctors and hopefully that they will respect my carcass no more than any other piece of meat. Maybe they could dress me up after and take my corpse to a pub, just like the film Weekend at Burnies.

Respect for a dead body? No. Respect for the memory of a person? Only if they deserve it.

I do like the idea that there will be this list held by the state of all those who opted out, maybe those people could be refused any treatment developed through organ donor or work on cadavers?

Out of interest has anyone read Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go? It is one of my favourate books, unfortunately the movie was a let down.

It is sort of related in a sense the characters are clones who are being bred for the sole purpose of being donors.

However it clearly a different ethical question.

In actual fact this is unlikely to be useful technology as grown tissues individually is proven technology. For instance a trachea has been grown in the lab.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tissue_engineering

I similar to you in that I can't understand why anyone wouldn't want to do it, unless they aren't

Still refusing treatment on this, goes against established medical ethics. However you would hope they have a change of view, if they realised this organ will save your life.

I believe the concern is that the mentality might develop that your organs are worth more than you are. If someone is old/sick or in an accident, the powers that be might be more likely to let the person die to get their organs. They save money on treatment and get the organs.

Sure, you would expect some evidence of that in countries that have this system if that was the case. Worth finding out.

I have seen the movie, and that is an interesting moral point.
I fully support (and hope for a quick commercial deployment of) lab-grown tissue and organs, preferably from a patients own stem cells, but until that point, we have to rely on donations.

Growing a whole human for its organs goes too far in my opinion, but it also seems a bit overkill, growing an entire person just for a liver or a kidney when you can grow just the organ.

I don't think it will be necessary to grow whole human beings, in the future they'll be able to grow organs from your own DNA from scratch or at least that's what I've heard. Obviously creating a life just to harvest it's organs would be wrong and it should be banned if it hasn't already, that is still murder even if you played god to do it.