Sir, – In your article on opt-out organ donation, you claim that under the current system a person “has to opt-in to donation by holding a donor card or having their wishes noted on their driving licence” (“Plans for ‘soft opt-out’ organ donation system to go to Cabinet by end of the month”, News, November 21st).
In fact, a transplant team can approach any family in a position where their loved one has become a candidate for organ donation. The family decides. If organ donation cards were required to give consent for transplant, it would be an extraordinarily clumsy and inefficient way of doing so.
The proposed change to an opt-out organ donation system will therefore not change the practice of organ donation. The family wishes will remain paramount. However, introducing soft opt-out will potentially reduce the donor pool significantly, especially given the widespread distrust of the health service following various organ retention scandals. Beware the law of unintended consequences.
Our current system gives us the best of all worlds. Everyone is a potential donor and the family’s wishes are paramount, as they should be.
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We can make it better, though, by replacing donor cards with an online system where people can register their desire to donate their organs. Easy and rapid access to that database for transplant teams might make the family’s decision that bit easier.
International evidence, notably from Spain, shows that the real way to increase organ donation rates is to improve the transplant infrastructure. – Yours, etc,
GREG FOLEY,
Booterstown,
Co Dublin.