Via Amanda, who as a medical student sees the value of organ transplants on regular basis, the Washington Post has a sensible editorial on reforming our organ donation system:
All state governments and the District have tried to encourage donations by asking people to sign up when they apply for a driver’s license. But not enough people respond to this prompting, so it’s time to consider extra incentives. Three types of incentives merit attention. The decision to pledge organs could be linked to the chance of receiving one: People who check the box on the driver’s-license application when they are healthy would, if they later fell sick, get extra points in the system used to assign their position on the transplant waiting list (other factors include how long you have waited and how well an available organ would match your blood type and immune system). Another sort of incentive is financial: Georgia has experimented with a $9 discount on its driver’s-license fee. A final reform would shift from opt-in organ donations to an opt-out system: Unless you went out of your way to check a box on your driver’s license application to indicate that you did not want to give organs, you would be considered a potential donor.
These strike me as common sense and frankly rather timid steps toward increasing the supply of organs for transplant. I find it depressing that these proposals are likely to be considered controversial among “bioethicists.”
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