At Premier Darrell Dexter's request, the Hollis Street facade of Province House shines green every night this week in honor of the Green Porch Light Project for Organ and Tissue Donation, a grass roots campaign in which supporters of organ and tissue donation turn their porch lights green to celebrate National Organ and Tissue Donation Awareness Week, April 23-28. As darkness began to settle over West End Halifax Wednesday night, Rosa Eileen Barss Donham got in the spirit with a green porch light and blue butterfly wings, symbol of Nova Scotia's Legacy of Life program. Rosa knows someone dear to her...

In response to this morning's post about mandated choice in organ donation progams, Contrarian reader JB points out this TED talk by Dan Ariely, author of Predictably Irrational, about counter-intuitive aspects of human decision making. The discussion of organ donation starts at the five minute mark, but the whole talk is fascinating....

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...