Organ donation might be a matter of how you're asked
LA Times | Mary MacVean
Photo: UCLA physician Hans Gritsch, right, prepares a donated organ for transplant. (Spencer Weiner / Los Angeles Times)
Take a look at your driver’s license. Does it have the little dot indicating you’re willing to donate your organs should the worst happen? Either way, researchers say there are public policy implications in how you decided.
If you were asked to sign up to donate, would you make the same decision as if you were asked to sign up to refuse to donate your organs?
Turns out that in Europe, some countries have opt-in programs â€" those in which a person must decide to become a donor. Others have opt-out programs â€" those in which a person must decide not to become a donor. In the first case, not 15% of people choose to donate, whereas in the opt-out countries, the figure is often above 90%.
That, the researchers say in a study published Tuesday in the PNAS, is because the kind of organ donation program gets people to think about the act of donating in very different ways. “We contend that different default policies influence the very meaning that people assign to the act of being an organ donor,†the researchers from Cornell and Stanford universities wrote.
The researchers note that there are likely several factors influencing the donor rates, including inertia. But they say also that people don’t always just take the easy way out.
Read more
{Register to be an organ,eye and tissue donor. To learn how, www.donatelife.net or www.organdonor.gov}
Photo: UCLA physician Hans Gritsch, right, prepares a donated organ for transplant. (Spencer Weiner / Los Angeles Times)
Take a look at your driver’s license. Does it have the little dot indicating you’re willing to donate your organs should the worst happen? Either way, researchers say there are public policy implications in how you decided.
If you were asked to sign up to donate, would you make the same decision as if you were asked to sign up to refuse to donate your organs?
Turns out that in Europe, some countries have opt-in programs â€" those in which a person must decide to become a donor. Others have opt-out programs â€" those in which a person must decide not to become a donor. In the first case, not 15% of people choose to donate, whereas in the opt-out countries, the figure is often above 90%.
That, the researchers say in a study published Tuesday in the PNAS, is because the kind of organ donation program gets people to think about the act of donating in very different ways. “We contend that different default policies influence the very meaning that people assign to the act of being an organ donor,†the researchers from Cornell and Stanford universities wrote.
The researchers note that there are likely several factors influencing the donor rates, including inertia. But they say also that people don’t always just take the easy way out.
Read more
{Register to be an organ,eye and tissue donor. To learn how, www.donatelife.net or www.organdonor.gov}
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