French Tribune | Annabel Tantou
The doctors of the UK are consistently criticizing the decision of Gordon Brown, the former Prime Minister who introduced an opt-out system. The opt-out system is an option given to the general public to strike their names off the list of donors who are likely to donate their organs after they die. According to the system, when a person applies or re-applies for a driver’s license, along with the form of the license, he/she is provided with a form which gives him/her an option to opt out of being a donor.
In this context, Dr. Dennis Karpaik, who has undergone a liver transplant, said that the transplant system of BritishColombia should be changed in order to encourage the people to opt for deceased organs donations. He added that B. C. along with Saskatchewan ranks the lowest in organ donation rates in Canada, with 9.3 donations per million people. On the other hand, the donation rate in Ontario and Quebec is 17.6% and 14.4%, respectively. He said that ironically in 2010, only 49 deceased organ donors were there in BC.
1 comment:
The opt out system is a difficult one for me. As a liver transplant recipient myself, I surely understand the challenges of the current system - the numbers surely do not meet the need.
However, as someone who has made a career partly in the field of medical ethics, the issue of informed consent comes in. I can easily see that an individual may sign everything placed in front of them to get on with their lives, not reading any of it. It would be counter-productive to have someone opt out when they didn't know they had,
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