A couple of you may know that I have been working on a project for college on the Irish Kidney Association and organ donation. I picked the IKA because there is a genetic disorder in my family called Polycystic Kidney Disease, which I have a 1 in 2 chance of developing. For the last four months I have gathered 100s of articles from around the world on chronic kidney disease and organ donor policy and I have paid a particular interest in how cadaver organ donors are found.
In Ireland, we rely on an opting in system whereby people carry an organ donor card normally issued by the IKA. An EC poll has said that 30% of Irish people have a donor card although the IKA say that according to their research 85% say they want their organs used if they die in an accident. So what’s going on with the other 55%? I did my own mini survey recently and half of those who said they wanted a donor card said ‘they just hadn’t got around to it’.
So I was interested to read page 37 of the Programme for Government prepared by our shiny, new government last week.
‘We will legislate to change the organ donation to an opt-out system for organ transplantation, rather than an opt in system to improve the availability of organs for patients in desperate need.’
Fair enough as my mini poll revealed, many people want to donate their organs but just never get around to it so making it compulsory unless you opt out makes sense. Except for the fact that countries who have adopted the opting out system have seen no discernible rise in transplant rates and in the case of Spain who introduced presumed consent in the 1970s they found the system to be unworkable. Mainly because the law cannot be forced on people who did not consent to having their organs donated in the first place and the next of kin will always need to be consulted.
So why are our government wasting time and money on pointless legislation, which has already been proved ineffective? The IKA do not believe in the opt out system and are much more in favour of establishing a register of donors. I also believe this to be is a better option and it really doesn’t need legislation, as it’s the same as the current system it will just need proper organisation. If 5000 temporary part-time Census Enumerators can be employed to find out how many of us claim to be Jedi Knights why can’t a small number of 200 be employed to travel around the country collecting organ donor consent forms with a next of kin signature. It could be door to door, in shopping centres, outside the church gates!
This way we don’t have to waste time on legislation that we don’t need and if the IKA are to believed will not improve the rate of organ donation. There are an estimated 600 people waiting on organ donations in Ireland today and the more time we waste on pointless legislation the more lives will be lost needlessly.
