Support opt-out organ donation to save lives

In January this year Gordon Brown said he wanted a national debate on whether to alter the system of organ donation. He wrote in the Sunday Telegraph that a system of presumed consent could make a huge difference. He was right.

Since then progress has been slow. Over recent years there have been some welcome endorsements of an opt-out policy, whereby people’s consent is assumed unless they say otherwise.

Last year the Chief Medical Officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, published a report in which he called for legislation to be amended to create an opt-out scheme. Following on from this the Health Secretary, Alan Johnson, asked the Organ Donation Taskforce to evaluate the impact of a presumed consent system. Their report will be published later this year but everyday they delay more people are needlessly dying.

And while the government stalls things continue to get worse. The number of patients waiting for an organ is increasing ever year but the number of donors is not keeping up. Consequently the latest figures show that there are 7,655 patients waiting for a transplant. One in ten people waiting for a heart transplant will die.

In order to meet demands the NHS Organ Donation Register would need to have around 35 million people on it. While there are other ways of raising donor numbers, the only way to achieve anything approaching this number is an opt-out scheme. In Spain, where such as scheme is in operation, there are nearly three times as many people on the register as a percentage of the total population.

Presumed consent is also the best way of acting on the patients’ wishes. Over 70% of the population are in favour of donating their organs but only 20% sign up.

Even the new bible for the Torries – Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein’s book about how ‘choice architecture’ can be used to nudge people in the right direction – preaches the virtues of an opt-out system. Although no high ranking Conservative would openly admit to wanting such a system and they are unlikely to bring one in. This makes it even more important that Brown stops dithering.

To make sure he knows that public opinion is behind him and to back an opt-out system for organ donation sign the petition below.

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/opt-out/

To register as an organ donor click below.

http://www.uktransplant.org.uk/ukt/how_to_become_a_donor/how_to_become_a_donor.jsp

To buy a copy of Nudge click below.

Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness