British Prime Minister Advocates Presumed Consent for Organ Donation

The following excerpts are from UK PM backs organ donation plan, CNN.com, Jan. 13, 2008:

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said he supports plans to allow hospitals to take dead patients’ organs without their prior consent. * * *

Under the present system [in the United Kingdom] people must sign up to an organ donor register if they want to give up their organs after they die. A total of 14.9 million people — around 24 per cent of the population [of the UK] — are on the register.

However, Brown said he backed moving to a system of “presumed consent” whereby a dead person’s organs would automatically be available for transplant unless individuals had opted out of the national register or family members objected.

The proposals are closely modeled on the donor system in Spain where Brown said around 35 people per million had their organs used by hospitals. This compares with 13 donors per million in Britain and 25 per million in America, he added.

Special thanks to Sara Hudman (J.D. Candidate, Texas Tech University School of Law) for bringing this article to my attention.