How to Increase Organ Donations

A recent editorial entitled Kidneys Needed — Incentives for organ donors could save lives, Wash. Post, Oct. 15, 2006, at B06, makes the following suggestions to increase the number of organs available for transplantation:

Three types of incentives merit attention. The decision to pledge organs could be linked to the chance of receiving one: People who check the box on the driver’s-license application when they are healthy would, if they later fell sick, get extra points in the system used to assign their position on the transplant waiting list (other factors include how long you have waited and how well an available organ would match your blood type and immune system). Another sort of incentive is financial: Georgia has experimented with a $9 discount on its driver’s-license fee. A final reform would shift from opt-in organ donations to an opt-out system: Unless you went out of your way to check a box on your driver’s license application to indicate that you did not want to give organs, you would be considered a potential donor.

Note that LifeShares, a non-profit voluntary network of organ donors, is already established in which members promise to donate upon their death, and they give fellow members first access to their organs.