Essay on Increasing the Number of Organ Donors

England currently practices an opt-in system of organ donation. The waiting list for organ donor transplants exceeds 10,000 meaning that people are losing their lives everyday due to a shortage of donor organs. It has been suggested for a while that England adopts the opt-out system, in order to increase donation rates and decrease the number of people dying whilst waiting for an organ transplant. This systematic review aims to present the different ethical arguments supporting a change of organ donation system to opting-out instead of opting-in.

“The measure of a life, after all, is not its duration, but its donation.” (Corrie Ten Boom) As living creatures our organs are a very vital detail into who, what we are and how we work. We would not be able survive well and live our lives to the fullest that we possibly can, if we did not have them. Organ donation is a very important thing, whether it is just a kidney to be a live donor. Or giving it all when life is over and a new chapter begins. Even though people do attribute to organ donation there are just not enough people doing it, and now people are getting rich off of this misfortunes of others.

It is estimated that roughly 8,000 people die waiting on the transplant list each year. Our current system that resembles an opt-in system proves to be flawed considering it aids the tragic imbalance between need for and supply of transplantable organs. The President’s Commission on Bioethics has identified varying strategies for organ procurement that include the opt-out approach, a financial inducement model, and an organ market- and some scholars have suggested changing the standard of death to higher brain death. It is in my opinion that the most sound alternative to improve the organ deficit in the United States is to implement the opt-out model. This model promises an increase in transplantable organs that would in hopes off-set the many lives lost due to insufficient supply.

Since that time donation has been the only way to increase the current supply of transplantable organs. Some people are uncomfortable with the idea of organ donation due to misconceptions and lack of knowledge. In fact, organ transplant recipient Dr. Phil H. Berry, Jr. points out that there would be less deaths of people waiting for transplants, “if Americans would overcome their reluctance to become organ donors” (29). Organ donation whether it is upon your death or giving a part of a liver or one kidney while you are alive is a charitable gesture towards your fellow man and could give meaning to the end of your life. The mere act of donating could bring more peace to your loved ones at the time of your death and as a result, you could give

The demand for organ donors far exceeds the supply of available organs. According to the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) … there are more than 77,000 people in the U.S. who are waiting to receive an organ (Organ Selling 1). The article goes on to say that the majority of those on the national organ transplant waiting list are in need of kidneys, an overwhelming 50,000 people. Although financial gain in the U.S and in most countries is illegal, by legalizing and structuring a scale for organ donor monetary payment, the shortage of available donors could be reduced. Legalizing this controversial issue will help with the projected forecast for a decrease in the number of people on the waiting list, the ethical concerns around benefitting from organ donation, and to include compensation for the organ donor.

Organ donation has the power to change a life ending incident into a life giving one. Throughout the United States many patients are suffering due to the lack of a vital organ, because there is more demand than supply of organs, many patients die without ever receiving one. Although organ donation saves many lives, there have been questions in regards to ethics that surround it. People are even making the argument that it should not be practiced. Another question that has surfaced is, how can organ donation be improved in the United States so that people in need of organs can receive them at a high rate? Even though organ donation in the United States has received criticism due to ethical dilemmas such as priority distribution, contributing to illegal harvesting and alternative sources; the possibilities of saving lives and giving people a second chance outweighs the potential consequences it holds. Organ donation is one of the most important modern day medical marble that needs to be better utilized United States.

Most people would rather avoid making a decision and accept the default because it requires no effort

In todays time, the demand for organs have sky rocketed, but the organ supply has dropped tremendously. There are too many people on this planet for their to be others dying from not receiving an organ. Not enough people take the time out to sign up to donate organs. Signing up to become a organ donor is as simple as checking a box on your license form. Being an organ donor does not quickly put an end to your life as most people may think. It simply secures another person 's life once yours has come to an end. If organ donation was made mandatory it could say hundreds of more lives than right now. When a

“6,935 people are dying because they had to wait. That’s 19 people dying per day for an entire year”(Barry). That’s nearly 7,000 lives; which is equivalent to to almost 25% of the current undergraduate body here at UW-Madison. According to Dr. Chris Barry, a transplant surgeon and researcher at the University of Rochester Medical Center, “19 people die per day on the organ donor recipient list because there aren’t enough people signing their organ donor consent forms”. He proposes that we need to increase people's knowledge and tear down the myths and barriers of organ donation to facilitate their decision to donate.

Please try and consider the following situation. You’re sitting in an emergency room, waiting for your dad to awake after falling into liver failure, costing him to need a new liver. Not knowing if it’s possible, crossing your fingers. You wish you could help, but you can’t. Someone else can. An organ donor. According to organdonor.gov, about 116,000 U.S. citizens are waiting on the organ transplant list as of August 2017. To put that number into perspective, that’s more than double the amount of people that can fit into Yankee Stadium. And to make matters worse, 20 people each day die waiting for a transplant.(organdonor.gov) Organ donation can offer patients a second chance at life and provides

There are as many as 4,500 people waiting for an organ donation to save or significantly improve their life. In 2012, there were 2,124 lucky Canadians who received an organ transplant and an unfortunate 256 people who died while waiting (Government of Canada, 2013), which leaves 2,120 waiting for a transplant each year. “Composer David Foster pushed ‘presumed consent’ for organ donations” by Grant, suggests that Canada moves to an opt-out organ donation system to improve donation rates. I understand that there are a lot of legal and ethical issues regarding organ donation but I believe that an opt-out program will help improve the donation rates. Organ donations have an impact on nursing because nurses are the ones caring for the potentially very sick/dying patients as well as educating/supporting the families in their decision making process to either accept or donate an organ (Aulisio, DeVita, & Luebke, 2007).

Recent reports of public figures receiving life-saving transplants have brought renewed attention to the scarcity of organs and the importance of organ transplants. Although more transplants are being performed in the United States each year the transplant waiting list continues to grow. It has been considered that the decrease in organ donors is due to the unsuccessful measures taken by health care professionals. This is a limited view of the matter because health care professionals are not directly responsible for the policies and other guidelines for procuring organs. The general population does not have the interest of suffering individuals at heart when it comes to donation.

Every day, 20 people die because they are unable to receive a vital organ transplant that they need to survive. Some of these people are on organ donation lists and some of them are not. The poor and minorities are disproportionately represented among those who do not receive the organs they need. In the United States alone, nearly 116,000 people are on waiting lists for vital organ transplants. Another name is added to this list every 10 minutes. This paper will argue that organ donation should not be optional. Every person who dies, or enters an irreversible vegetative state with little or no brain function, should have his or her organs-more specifically, those among the organs that are suitable for donation-harvested. A single healthy donor who has died can save up to eight lives (American Transplant Foundation).

The shortage of organ transplants has been an ongoing crisis for years; the growing list of patients awaiting transplants has no end in sight, and the number of people dying while they waste away on the waiting list is not going to go down unless something changes.Society has turned away from alternatives to our archaic organ donation program, but there are other options available.The transplant community and society as a whole need to step back and rethink--to adopt a more open-minded views on organs as a resource in order to save lives and make meaningful changes to the national transplant program.

In this paper I will be using the normative theory of utilitarianism as the best defensible approach to increase organ donations. Utilitarianism is a theory that seeks to increase the greatest good for the greatest amount of people (Pense2007, 61). The utilitarian theory is the best approach because it maximizes adult organ donations (which are the greater good) so that the number of lives saved would increase along with the quality of life, and also saves money and time.