Thursday, August 23, 2007

Organs wanted

There's been some (not enough) talk in the news recently about proposals for making organ donation in the UK an 'opt-out' system. This makes clear sense to me for several obvious reasons. You can register on-line at this excellent website (link)and obtain all the information you may need before making a decision.

5 comments:

Kate Mc said...

You _ARE_ alive! Yay!

Interesting topic, though. I'll have to keep an eye out to see if anything similar is popping up over here, as I know organ donation is always a hot topic.

I'll admit to not having signed a donor card (as you have to do here in Canada) - and I honestly have no excuse. All the arguments FOR organ donation are fantastic and completely legitimate... but I can't get over a weird gut reaction that just... creeps me out isn't quite the wording I'm looking for... but it'll have to do.

An opt-out system would take a lot of social norming campaigns to bring about, but it has fantastic possibilities...

JM said...

Hi!! It's been awhile!

Calavera said...

Finally some signs of life from you.

Do you know if Doc D&C is doing ok? (i dunno, you two seem to be friends out of the blogosphere - forgive me if I'm wrong.)

Anyway, I think that this is an awesome system. Totally for it, myself.

Dr. Deb said...

Interesting.

Anonymous said...

As a long-time card-carrying potential donor, I have over the last three decades tried to encourage as many people as possible to register as donors. I feel that an opt-out system would be enormously better than the present opt-in system, as the last thirty years have given me an idea of just how many people are not potential donors not because they have objections to being a donor, but simply because they never get around to taking the brief time needed to register. On the other side of the coin, I feel sure that anyone with strong religious or other reasons for not being a donor would take the time to register with an opt-out system.