02 Nov A new approach to organ donation: make people decide

Britain’s 500-year-old Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons has thrown its weight behind a new approach to the shortage of organs for lifesaving transplants: make people decide whether they want to be donors.

Health professionals involved in organ and tissue donation have long been aware of a maddening statistic: Although about 90 percent of adults express willingness to be organ and tissue donors, only about half get around to signing the consent form (which appears on on the health card renewal application in Nova Scotia). Without a signed card, it’s harder to get distraught relatives to agree to donation in the brief, critical interval following death.

The Royal College wants to require every adult in the UK to decide whether to donate their organs after death. Under an approach known as mandated choice, citizens could say yes, no, or “ask my relative,” but they would have to make a choice, which would be recorded in a national database.

A shortage of organs available for transplant leads to more than 1,000 avoidable deaths per year in Britain.

A similar approach is already in place in the Illinois, where residents wishing to renew their driver’s licenses must first answer the question, “Do you wish to be an organ donor?” The state now has a 60 percent donation rate, vs. 38 percent nationwide.

University of Chicago economist Richard H. Thaler cited the Illinois experience in a recent New York Times article supporting mandated choice.

In Europe, some countries have achieved even higher donation rates by presuming that people want to donate unless they take the trouble to opt-out. Austria, which follows an opt-out approach, has a donation rate of 99 percent. Neighboring Germany, which required donors to opt-in, has a rate of only 12 percent.

More than 4,000 Canadians, including more than 120 Nova Scotians, are waiting for organs. Maybe it’s time we considered a new approach.

Note: If you have already signed the donor consent form on your health card renewal application, please tell your family about your choice. Aside from signing the card, this is the most important thing you can do to ensure your wishes will be followed.

If you haven’t given consent, please download this form, fill it out, and mail it to MSI Registry and Enquiry, P.O. Box 500, Halifax, NS B3J 2S1. And speak with your family.

Not sure if you’ve given consent: Check your health card. If the word DONOR is not embossed to the right of your birth date, you have not registered as a donor.

[Disclosure and disclaimer: Although Contrarian‘s alter-ego sits on the Nova Scotia Advisory Council on Organ and Tissue Donation, thoughts expressed in this blog should not be taken to reflect the views of the council.]

Hat tip: CC.