h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I think I broadly agree with the majority here. An opt-out system, well, I do think that its the sort of thing people would complain about for a bit and then get used to and it probably would make a huge practical difference, but its kind of philosophically distasteful isn't it? Its forcing beliefs on people. Normally a phrase that makes my teeth grate, but I think appropriate here.

Don't Hindus have a thing about the importance of the body remaining whole as well?

I'm not sure about denying people transplant treatment if they didn't opt-in. Perhaps priority treatment for those who do? I don't think I'd like the health services making decisions on who gets treatment on a moral basis though.

I think I'm on the donation register - I filled out a form to join it when I moved to Bristol and signed up for the health service here. No idea how I'd go about getting a donor card, but I'm assuming I should be somewhere on a database and the doctors will know about it when I die?

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Why not?

Most people just don't get around do signing donor cards. And even if someone didn't feel comfortable about, say, donating his heart or eyes or whatever, if he ends up needing any of those things he should just be told - gee too bad for you?

I don't see it that way. It's not a tit for tat thing. As in - 'Oh, you offer your organs and then you maybe get some too.' That wouldn't be the reason I would happily donate my organs or whatever other bits - I'd do it because I know I'd have no further use for them and I don't care what happens to my body after it dies.

If other people feel differently but, say, are in need of my eyes after I'm dead - well, great. Take my eyes, like I'd care after I'm dead.

My point is that nobody who requires an organ or eye transplant should be denied this option based on non-medical grounds. Such as, they didn't sign their donor card.

az

Re: signing of donor cards. Not may people here have read Coma then?

az

Yes, a priority system for being a recipient sounds better. Unless everyone is automatically asked about going on the donor register e.g. when joining the electoral roll, some people may just not think about doing it.

I'm curious about those who wish to be disposed of intact. Presumably body parts which have become detached naturally (baby teeth, hair, nails) or otherwise unavoidably (accident, surgery) do not count?

Kind of simulpost there..

Yeah but, it's not for any of us - let alone the state - to judge whether people's beliefs or issues about what happens to their bodies after they die are *valid*.

And so I don't feel an opt out programme would be fair at all, for reasons I posted previously.

Priority systems are already in place. Someone who continues to smoke, for example, can get knocked off the heart transplant list. Which I think is fair enough.

az

I think it's an odd thing that we're apparently not allowed control of our body after we die.

Flamin' Nora - we're not even allowed control of it while we're alive, so it shouldn't really be surprising - but it really really really irks me.

I've carried a donor card all my adult life, as have my parents, my brother and my husband. My grandad insisted for the last 40 years of his life that his body go to medical science - either as a donor or for medical students to practice on. He got his wish with the latter and we were all happy to go along with that.

My parents have now made the same wishes known to just about anyone who might have something to do with it, and I've done the same.

and I have also told everyone that if the worst happens and we're in a position where the worst thing happens, and one of the Gruesomes would be suitable for a donor - then it must be done. We remind ourselves of that fairly often (since a friend's daughter died because she could't get a little heart). One of the doctors who treated her told us that it is so difficult to ask grieving parents that it's almost impossible unless they have previously made their wishes known.

Anyone who countermands my wishes after my death - well, I'd haunt them if I believed in that sort of thing. But I'd wish plague pestillence and pest on them.

It's my body. It's the only thing I truly own and I will do with it as I wish.

I do,however, accept that for whatever reasons (valid to them) some people do not agree with organ donation. Fair enough. Just don't try to push your values on me and I will remember not to keep pestering you to give blood and carry a donor card.

I'm pro opt-out system. People who really feel strongly enough will do so. People who are too apathetic to do so - sorry, but tough. The people I drag along to blood donor sessions wouldn't go if I didn't keep reminding them of the date.

ah, it's a bit of a hobby horse, isn't it?

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Ummm...?


az

"It's my body. It's the only thing I truly own and I will do with it as I wish"

Seems to me that is exactly what is wrong with an opt-out system. It is basically saying you don't even own your own body, it's just on loan from the state.

Hmm, very interesting discussion this one.

I think, refering to Kelli's opening post, that an opt-out scheme isn't the way to go. I like to think my body is my own and that ultimately if it's something I feel strongly enough about it should be my choice to actively seek addition to a national organ register.

(This isn't too difficult (in the UK, at least)doctor's surgeries, hosptials and such often have little cards at reception desks which can be filled out. Blood donor centers do too.)

I think this goes with another point raised about relatives having the 'final say' on the subject.

I personally think it's wrong. If I have made it known that if the circumstances arise whereby my organs could be used for transplantaion, then they should be used. The fact that I am dead (or rather, will be as soon as the life support's switched off) shouldn't alter the fact that *I* want *my* organs to be used if they can be.

If, while I was 'alive' I wanted and could donate a kidney to someone would my relatives have the right to stop that happening, no. So why the hell does that change if I'm at death's door?

Wrong.. wrong wrong. I'm sorry. I think it's just wrong.

Regarding the comments of someone receiving organs if they aren't prepared to donate themselves. A tricky one. I know that I'd be pretty ed off if my bits were to be given to someone who has some kind of objection to donating, but not to receiving. It's a double standard, I don't like it.

That said, at the end of the day the organs are only good for so long, are only compatible with certain people, so while I know right now I'd be ed off, I'd rather they went to someone, even someone with an attitude I disagree with, than no one at all. (Assuming, of course that they're usable and there's people who can use them)

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no it's not, really.

I just think that if you had to opt out, your wishes couldn't be overridden by your family.

OK for kids and those under the age of majority, I can understand parents wanting control - but I thought we were over the days when we "belonged" to our parents?

I do realise, however, that I have relatively militant views about this. Partly because of my friend's child,but also because closer to home there is a real chance a close relative might need a heart. I'd give my kidney like a shot, but I can't give my heart.

My belief is that the body is just a thing. When you're dead you're dead. And I accept that not everyone believes that.

It just makes me sooooo mad to think that something that I completely believe in could be overridden by, say, my nutty old militant-christian aunt if she were my only surviving relative(or the one who got there first).

When I ask around about this - as I did at work when I saw the thread - only one person said "no,I don't want to be a donor" 3 (not including me) carry donor cards (and two of them are American and isn't there something about it on your driving licences?)

but... out of 15 people we have now covered 5. The other 10 while agreeing that it would be handy to get a heart if you needed it, and that yes, carrying the card is a good idea, they have never taken the step of picking up a card. Even though they are there in most doctor's surgeries and at the chemist. And most of them thought that opting out wouldn't hurt them, since of the 15, the one who objects said that she most certainly would.

If the rules were changed so that your own wishes couldn't be overriden - that the donor card was the trump card,then I wouldn't worry about an opt out. Then I'd want a big tearjerking campaign to get more people carrying them.

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az


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What I meant was: (I've just explained my feelings about opting-out rather than in) if I have decided not to be buried, take part in a religion while I was alive, I certainly don't want it being done to me when I'm not in a position to object.

There's another side to it too. And this is why I have made my wishes known about the Gruesomes so much: in that crucial window of time, who knows what grief would do to me. My long-held belief in the donor system might be overtaken with the event. I can imagine that happening. Afterwards, when it was too late to save another person (child's) life, I would most likely regret it.

Wouldn't it be possible to have a dual system where someone who cares either way could definitively opt in or out (with no-one able to override their wishes in either case), and where someone had done neither, relatives could be consulted to be asked what the deceased *would have wanted*, not what the relatives want.

Though there *is* the issue of giving organs to the best-matched needy person, if someone *had* definitively opted out, I don't see any moral problem with giving preference to someone else who hadn't done so when two people on the waiting list are essentially evenly matched in terms of tissue compatibility with an available organ.

If someone has religious objections to their body not being intact after death - fine, but it would seem only right that they shouldn't be subjected to the guilt of having someone else cut up so that they may live, or being cut up themselves and losing one of their precious organs so that some foreign working organ can replace it.

That makes a lot of sense to me Potholer.

Meanwhile Sho, while donor cards may be available at surgeries and chemists, they're never prominent. I had no idea where to get one from until reading your post there. Plus healthy people with healthy organs might only visit those places once every few years or so.

well, you can probably get one in Boots - you can get everything else there!

I have to say that I prefer not to have an opt-out simply because so many relatives have a hissy fit when a relative died who hadn't got around to opting. (out that is)

What about if you didn't carry a card because you vehemently do not believe in organ donaion, but the docs asked your relative (let's say wife, for argument's sake) and she thought it a reasonable thing and said yes. We'd jump all over that decision, wouldn't we? (I know I would)

>>"...but the docs asked your relative (let's say wife, for argument's sake) and she thought it a reasonable thing and said yes..."

A card-based opt-out wouldn't really work - you'd need a register (or maybe a tattoo or ID chip ).
If your status was unknown, and the doctors asked your closest relatives what *your* wishes had been, either the relatives tell the truth (and everything's OK), the relatives lie (which isn't the doctor's fault), or the relatives say 'they didn't tell us' and guess (which isn't the doctor's fault either).
In fact, if there was a register-based opt-out which you didn't bother to get on, and you didn't bother letting your next-of-kin know your wishes either, it would seem you've only yourself to blame assuming you're around in some afterlife to care.

With opt-in *and* opt-out registers, it'd be reasonable to assume that a citizen on neither was happy to leave the decision in the hands of other people.

Many conditions that put a person in the market for a transplanted organ develop for decades, like some types of hepetitis, emphasema, etc. This would mean that the people in the market would largely be ineligible to donate during the five year period you suggest. Perhaps they could recruit a suitable donor to sign up in their stead. This might work like donating blood for someone else.

A stipulation that to receive an organ, you must also be a willing donor wouldn't work in our current opt-in system. In an opt-out system though, those who opt out (well before any relevant condition is diagnosed) could be given lower precedence in a choice of two otherwise equal reciptients.

Those who have cultural/religious reasons for refusing to donate might also be those who would decline to be a recipient.

Potholer - "If your status was unknown, and the doctors asked your closest relatives what *your* wishes had been, either the relatives tell the truth (and everything's OK), the relatives lie"

with an opt out, if your wishes weren't known, surely you'd be automatically opted in, since any register would only contain objectors?

if you forget, sorry it's tough. If you really object, you'd make the effort.

don't kids get "citizenship" lessons? This is surely a subject which would be covered in that?

But then, I think voting should be compulsory and I don't have a problem carrying an ID card either.

Basically, with organ donation,I think it is up to the person the organs belong to. We are sure of so few things in this life (death & taxes is what it boils down to) that I really think that allowing a relative to overrule a donor card is absurd.

oh and perhaps someone with knowledge of this can tell me: why, when someone carries a donor card, do doctors ask the next of kin?

I thought that one of the reasons for actually having the things in the first place was so that doctors don't have to intrude on grief.