Pros And Cons Of Mandatory Organ Donation

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Recommended: Arguments about organ donation

Dominique Pontiflet
Professor Daniel Plunkett
English 1101
Section: J
November 28, 2014
Mandatory Organ Donation

Organ donation is the gift of life. In the United States alone, there are over 120,000 patients on a waiting list for an organ transplant. Many of patients, such as those suffering from kidney failure, can survive prior to receiving a donor organ with treatments like dialysis which can extend life until a kidney becomes available. Other patients may not be so lucky, but a system has been developed to distribute organs as they become available to those in the most need. The fact of the matter is, there are more people waiting for an organ transplant than there are donor organs available. While kidneys and tissues such as bone marrow …show more content…

Our country has adopted presumed refusal, more commonly known as the opt-in system, which has the highest donation rate of any country with a like policy. For example, the general public must agree, or opt-in, to be a donor by registering to do so, such as when you are asked if you wish to be listed as a donor while renewing your license. A person’s organs cannot be extracted from their corpse in this system, unless they have given their consent. But, if a patient is registered as an organ donor their family can bar their decision and prevent them from donating their organs. Sadly, this method does not produce very many donor organs resulting in low organ donation rates compared to other countries and causing countless patients to die without receiving a …show more content…

“Mandated choice is a prime example of how to transform the ineffective system we currently have while simultaneously avoiding much of the controversy between presumed refusal and presumed consent. By eliminating the “presumed” nearly every individual could explicitly state their wishes prior to death.” (Springer.) This will require people citizens to consider their own death and how they feel about their organs being donated. Families of the deceased must decide whether or not to donate their organs and during the whirlpool of emotions that devour the family while grieving, it seems disrespectful to ask them about hacking the organs out of their

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