Seeking to stir open-minded, evidence-based and compassionate discussion!
A couple notes first:
– I am of course talking about organ donation after death. A lot of currently transplanted organs are actually from living donors (family, friends, even kind strangers who volunteered to be matched with someone in need).
– I’m not considering blood transfusions here (though blood is a tissue), as the process and need/challenges/limitations are different than with organs.
– There are a lot of misconceptions about organ donation, and most people don’t have a reason to know about it in-depth (and, therefore, don’t). I think it’s important to keep that in mind while discussing this. (Only one example: many people don’t realize that most people who die aren’t even eligible to donate organs, even if they said they wanted to).
– Perhaps not unrelated to the last point, I think it creeps people out that we get asked about organ donation at the BMV. In my proposed approach, we would stop this nonsense. The practice is useless at best, as a little logo on your driver’s license doesn’t give doctors permission to do anything even if you did die and were eligible to donate. They would follow your living will and/or next of kin’s or healthcare POA’s instructions.
My reasoning for this approach:
Why have people opt out instead of in?
– Everyone still gets a choice in whether to donate.
– Many people might be fine with donating organs, but haven’t insisted on this to their next of kin or drafted up a living will stating such. My approach eliminates the need to do that for organ donation (though living wills and conversations with family would still be important for ensuring your wishes are followed in other ways, or if you indeed do not want your organs donated).
– This approach might also eliminate some of the fears around donation — e.g., “doctors won’t try as hard to save you if you’re a donor;” well, if we’re all donors by default, we’d get ready evidence that doctors will indeed try to save any of us who show up at the ER.
Why must people opt out of receiving, too?
– It seems logical and fair.
– How can you expect to get something from someone — maybe a stranger — that you weren’t willing to give?
– If everyone wants to receive organs when they need them, but no one wants to donate if possible, how can that work?
Very curious to hear others’ thoughts and hopefully learn something I didn’t know!
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Why are you treating life saving measures as some kind of zero sum game?
Officially opting out is the law in Belgium. However in practice they still ask the family, unless the person agreed during his life, which is always asked when renewing your ID card. However your choice has no consequence for your own rights.
Before you enforce this you have to explain what happens when a child who has opted out – mistakenly has their organs harvested- and her parents want their organs returned.
how do their mum and dad get to bury their child complete when the NHS has screwed something else up.
You dont’ get to say “this will never happen”
you have to explain how the parents get their precious daughters heart back.
Who should get an organ where two people need it and meet all the physical conditions? Not sure there’s a right answer, but I can think of probably 100 factors more important than whether someone has signed up to be a potential organ donor themselves.
My body my choice
Isn’t the USA like the only opt in country in the west? We really should be opt out. I think that if this is unpopular opinion it’s just because people aren’t aware.
But some people still do think “the doctor will kill you if you’re an organ donor, der der.”
What if someone opts out in order to protect others because something is wrong with them through no fault of their own either through birth or disease? Would they still be excluded from receiving life-saving help because it’s “fair”?
While I agree with the opting out instead of opting in, I do not agree with the rest of your statement. However, we all have our opinions and this is after all the unpopular opinion page. 🙃
Of course, the main problem with this is you would have to be a genuine psychopath to receive a patient needing an urgent heart transplant, look at their information, say “seems here there haven’t ticked the box to be an organ donor” and then just leave them to die.
Don’t think this is an unpopular opinion, they changed it in the UK a few years ago and I know many countries did the same.
I’m okay with this.
Unpopular opinion is the wrong place for open minded evidence based discussion of any kind.
I think the opt-in thing is good in theory, but in practice it’s harder. Especially in places like Canada and the USA, organ donations directly contradict some people’s religious beliefs and having the law default to something that violates religious freedoms is generally frowned upon. Again, I do think it’d be great to have more people donate (and ik some places do this), but in North America I don’t know if the societies are ready or willing for this level of legal control.
You are assigning value to a human life. I don’t support this. Anyone should be able to receive organs whether they would donate themselves or not.
That being said, I do support the opt-out approach.
IDK but with the history of medical practices in the USA I think it might be easier to understand opting out.
It’s not hard to imagine situations where someone might be saveable but their organs are needed. Especially if a doctor thinks that person is less worthy of lifesaving care. Or if the insurance coverage isn’t as good. Plenty of reasons not to trust the medical industry here
Unpopular Opinion: pay for it, save the “moral” debate
I agree. If you don’t want someone else to have your organs that you have no use for then you shouldn’t be receiving donated organs.
But in the UK it is already opt out, it’s just a given that people will be happy to donate something they no longer need.
Personally I wish there was a clause where I could stipulate that my organs do not go to someone who refuses to donate theirs unless there’s an actual medical reason… Although I can’t possibly think of anything that would.
Although I’m looking into leaving my brain to science… My daughter has MS and signed up pretty fast after her diagnosis to leave her brain and spinal cord to further MS research, made me want to do it too.
Absolutely not. People retain the rights to the use of their internal organs by default even if they take no action. Consent to their use must be explicitly given, not implied. Opt out is grossly immoral.
So if you can’t afford an ID or are homeless and can’t get one due to not having a fixed address organ donation is compulsory but if you are rich it isn’t? Also if someone is rich and ops out do you really think they should be denied the option to get a transplant even when them paying for one decreases the price for everyone else?
We learn this in Microecon 101, not that unpopular
This is definitely an unpopular opinion. Kind of tired of seeing these posts in different places and versions over the last month. Makes me think people are writing college papers on this. I see that a bunch of countries are doing opt out laws. The process here where I live is fine and should not be changed unnecessarily.
The problem with changing a process that in many people’s minds is not a problem is a waste of government resources. When people change or make new laws that are unnecessary and costly then it tends to upset people. Partially because people are paranoid thinking that an issue like this is used to hide something else. The problem here is why would we do it and who is footing the bill?
For us here the databases are funded by registered hospitals and some (10-15%) federal funds. The registry to opt in is tracked by those that voluntarily register and self identify on a driver’s license and/or government ID.
Changing to an opt out would require an annotation to either an existing government database or creating a new one. All costing money that will be funded by taxpayers. Taxpayers in my country probably like others don’t like it wasted on stupid stuff.
Then there is the bureaucracy of opting out. How will it be done and filed? Who tracks it? How will it be identified with hospitals that are private and not government controlled? What happens if an organ is taken from an opt out? I am not saying it happens or doesn’t happen. Not easy to take it back once transplanted even though it would be a rights violation here. Much easier to take from an opt it than an opt out.
Some people because of various health issues cannot donate organs, but other than that it seems like a good idea.
If you agree with this then you agree with every single organization that enables things by default or makes you agree to terms by default. You are sheep if you agree
Especially in a universal healthcare system, I do not want to give the State any opportunity to start morality testing healthcare. Healthcare MUST be triaged based on need. For example, smokers and sun bed users should get treated for cancer. Unmarried women should receive pregnancy care and STD treatment. Etc. I know this is kind of a slippery slope argument but my point is that it’s a principle I do not think we should waiver on.
In a for profit system it makes even less sense to moralize. We all know the rich would continue to get treatment.
I do agree organ donation should be opt-in and it is worth spending money to market the need for it.
Really interesting one. Still a flawed system, but I do think there’s some logic to it in encouraging more people to think more broadly about their views on the topic and hopefully landing on “yes I’ll be a donor because I’d want someone to be a donor for me”. I’m not quite sure where I land on this overall, but some thoughts:
Instead of opting out of receiving, would there be some sort of interaction between opting in/out and prioritisation? So a simplified example being that person A has a higher chance of recovery than person B, so Person A might normally be prioritised for receipt of Organ X, but Person A is opting out of giving and therefore B is prioritised? So effectively, no one is blocked from receiving organs (as long as they’re happy to receive), but those unwilling to donate wouldn’t get them over and above someone in a roughly similar boat who would eventually donate? Further up the queue, essentially?
Or similarly, all things being equal, the person willing to donate is prioritised?
The other thing that came to mind is that this doesn’t just impact the individual. Say, for example, a family are all bar one opting in for donation, and it’s that one person who is denied an organ who passes away. After that point, arguably it’s the family who are left behind who are going to suffer immensely from this system.
How about situations where someone is in dire need of an organ and only then decides to change their mind and opt in? This feels like an unlikely scenario, but suppose there’s a quick change of heart (pun not intended) at the point of need, and then post-transplant they opt back out again? I suppose there’s nothing to really control for that unless the system had some sort of requirement that people needed to have been registered opt-in for a length of time in order to meet prioritisation threshold, which could end up being cruel.
Keen to read more about what others think here.
This makes sense and it’s fair. I would opt out
Last I checked it was a universally bad thing to try and bully people with threats of “but what if you get sick” and “what will you do when you die?”
Can you imagine walking into someone’s hospital room and telling a person that their loved one will die because they didn’t check one box on their ID or unless you, the next of Kin consent to let them harvest their organs the moment they pass?
Absolutely monstrous take. Upvote for shitty morality.
Opt out/opt in doesn’t matter in the USA because as soon as you can’t speak for yourself your family decides. The only way this isn’t the case is if there’s paperwork on file at the hospital before you’re not able to speak for yourself and submitted during the current admission. Paperwork that has to be submitted at each admission, so it doesn’t matter what you gave them some other time.
Agree.
If your organs are much too important and precious to you that you need them after you’re dead, then you should hold everyone else’s organs to the same standards.
Never thought about this. I really like it. Do i upvote because it’s technically not a popular opinion or downvote because i agree?
if you aren’t an organ donor, you shouldnt be an organ receiver. fair is fair
100% agree
I would support this in countries without a for-profit healthcare system.
All organ donation is before death. It’s an uncomfortable truth that has to be accepted, and is why it should never be coerced.
They are harvested when death is probable.
If Drs and EMTs hadn’t delayed or postponed care in the past in order to harvest organs for transplant I would agree with you but with the human element it’s rite for abuse.
https://futurism.com/neoscope/doctors-harvest-organs-living-patient
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/27/us/27transplant.html
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/bioethicist-let-doctors-kill-the-healthy-by-harvesting-organs/
If only there wasn’t that pesky 4th ammendment right too not have your property seized without your permission!
Dad got a liver and kidney on his death bed from kidney/liver failure.. when I checked I fortunately was already an organ donor on my license.
He’s had an extra 3.5 years of life thanks to that transplant and still doing well.. no better way to go out than knowing you could help someone else continue their life
I have diabetes. Chronic illnesses usually are a disqualifier for organ donation.
This is the norm (as it should be) here in Singapore. I’m surprised this is handled differently in the US.
It is in the majority of the world.
What about kids? Legally the parents would be making all medical decisions for them. What if the parents say no, “I don’t want my kid to be an organ donor”? That kid doesn’t get the new heart they need and just have to die?
Also for the people that have something wrong with them, say a disease that prevents them from being a donor just gets a pass?
Also after what has happened with Adriana Smith, I absolutely don’t want the government having even the slightest hint of more control of what happens to me if I should die. For those of you unaware:
https://abcnews.go.com/amp/Health/pregnant-brain-dead-woman-georgia-life-support-experts/story?id=122963319
Takes like this are one of the biggest reasons I’m more and more leaning towards no longer being a donor. No one is entitled to other ppls body parts and there is nothing wrong with wanting your body whole when you get whatever funeral service. It’s pure selfishness, entitlement, and ego to think ppl should be demanded to give up their own parts in order to be able to receive help from ppl who were happy being donors, or that theyre less than compared to donors. Atp with all the entitlement with these takes, I’m much more interested in removing my donor status and opting out, rather than keeping it.
and if you dont work and dont pay taxes you should not use any infrastruktur.. sry we are a SOCIATY we are SOLIDARIC… even if people make stupid decisions, stopp beeing controlling
Your system would not respect my choices of giving my organs, including to people who would not give theirs.
Thus, I would rather opt out of your system than participate in something I find unethical.
This should be a policy in every state.