The Telegraph reports that UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown is advocating for a plan that would lead to a presumption that individuals want their organs donated for transplantation purposes unless the individual specifically opts-out or family members object.
Like the United States, in the UK overwhelming numbers of people tell pollsters that they support organ donation, but when it comes time to actually get about the process of donating, large numbers opt out. According to the Telegraph, even though 90 percent of people in the UK say they support organ donation, 40 percent of relatives refuse consent when it comes time to decide whether or not to allow the organs of their loved ones to be donated.
In my opinion, this is a case of people telling pollsters what they think the pollsters want to hear. Few people are willing to appear so selfish as to deny another human being an organ after it is no longer useful to the original owner — especially in hypothetical future situations that most people don’t like to think about. When the reality finally hits, families are suddenly not so sure about their original view. Personally, I refuse to allow my organs to be donated in the event of my death until they fix the entirely screwed up system of regulation of the donor market that currently exists in the United States.
Joyce Robin of the UK’s Patient Concern nails Brown’s proposal with the observation that,
They call it presumed consent, but it is no consent at all. They are relying on inertia and ignorance to get the results they want.
It is just part of the ongoing war against patient autonomy in Western bioethics which presumes that people are autonomous to the extent that their medical decisions conform to a very limited range of possibilities. Give them enough time, and the position will eventually shift to the view that refusing to donate organs is absurd and invalid a choice in much the same way that the desire by some people to sell their organs is presumed to be today.
Source:
Organs to be taken without consent. Patrick Hennessy and Laura Donnelly, UK Telegraph, January 14, 2008.