Organ Donation — Australian Style

Last week was Australia’s “Organ Donor Awareness Week.”  According to Tim Richards, Unwrap the gift of life for those on hospitals’ death row, The Age, Feb. 25, 2008, at 11, “it seems its impact on the number of donations in hospital will be negligible.”

The article explains:

In Australia only about 10 people per million are registered as organ and tissue donors, giving Australia around 200 donors to transplant patients on the various transplant waiting lists each year. From these donors, around 650 transplant recipients are created. * * *

However, we have an unbearable situation where about 150 patients on transplant waiting lists die each year in Australia because there are not enough donors. * * *

It is an unbearable situation because there is a solution to the shortage of organs and tissue, a solution which has been applied in other countries, and which is being discussed presently in Britain. The solution provides the basis for having a donor rate of some three to three and a half times that found in Australia.

It is called a presumed consent or opt-out organ donation system, and it is where the law stipulates that everyone is a donor unless a person registers not to donate.

This opt-out type of system is the opposite of Australia’s current system, which is one where a person who wants to donate their organs must register their interest and so they must opt in to donate.