Ethics Of Organ Donation Essay

The ethics of organ donation and transplantation is a real issue in the American health system in many ways.The necessity for organ donors increases every day with 17 people dying each day while waiting for an organ, and even having 105,800 men, women, and children on the national transplant waiting list in the United States( cite organ donation statistics). As the need for organ donors and transplantation increases so does the likelihood of people becoming donors due to being influenced from emotional pressure. People not being organ donors are looked down upon quite a bit of the time because people don't see any downsides to it. The need for organ donors is constantly growing worldwide and the ethics behind organ donation systems can be greatly

The current system for deceased organ donation and transplantation in place in the United States is the opt-in system (opt in vs opt out system). The opt-in system, which is one of the two organ transplantation policies in place around the world, “requires individuals to manifestly express their preference for being a deceased organ donor” (quote from assessing global organ donation policies.). The other system in place for transplantation is the opt-out system which “presumes all individuals residing in a country/state to be a willing deceased organ donor unless they specifically “opt-out” of doing so.” (quote from assessing global organ donation policies). The opt-out system immediately seems like it would be a better option for increasing the amount of deceased organ transplantation options with the clinical reality being that one deceased organ donor is able to save up to 7 lives with organ transplants(cite assessing global organ donation

With the different systems in place there are also different consent mechanisms to follow the systems. Firstly there's the hard consent policies, which when in place value the preference of the individual letting them decide while still living to consent to the process of donation and would therefore exclude any role for family in the process of consent. Secondly there's the soft consent policy which heavily involves the wishes of the donor's family in both opt-in and opt-out systems. When active in a location where the opt-in system is in place, if an individual has never explicitly stated their preference for donation then the family of the individual will be approached to consent to the donation of the deceased individual's organs, or to legally authorize donation where they have. When the soft consent policy is in place where the opt-out system is in place then the family of a deceased individual will be approached to authorize the decision in place for the individual. This gives them the opportunity to choose the decision based on the donors preferences in case the individual had never opted out for whatever reason. Lastly there's the mandated choice policy, when in place requires the individual in a state/country to decide their preference for being a donor or not while still being alive and have it recorded. For instance in the United States