I haven’t studied organ donation, but I was under the impression that the current state of the (admittedly non-experimental) evidence suggested that switching to opt-out would likely yield significant (though not huge) increases in organ donation, e.g. see here and here.
Is it easy for you to explain, or link me to, the reasons for your skepticism?
The U.S. is third in the world for deceased donation per million persons. The difference between us and the #1 (Spain, which has a suite of good deceased donation policies, one of which is a version of presumed consent) can be explained by our generally not accepting deceased donors over 70 and Spain doing so. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/lt.23684/full
Also, the kidney shortfall is 20K/yr. Total deceased donor kidneys are about 12K per year. Opinions differ as to what percent of those eligible to be deceased donors donate, but the official government estimate is 75% (I think a range of 50-75% is probably credible), so even if all eligible deceased donors donated, there would still be an enormous shortfall in kidney transplants each year.
I haven’t studied organ donation, but I was under the impression that the current state of the (admittedly non-experimental) evidence suggested that switching to opt-out would likely yield significant (though not huge) increases in organ donation, e.g. see here and here.
Is it easy for you to explain, or link me to, the reasons for your skepticism?
The U.S. is third in the world for deceased donation per million persons. The difference between us and the #1 (Spain, which has a suite of good deceased donation policies, one of which is a version of presumed consent) can be explained by our generally not accepting deceased donors over 70 and Spain doing so. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/lt.23684/full
Also, the kidney shortfall is 20K/yr. Total deceased donor kidneys are about 12K per year. Opinions differ as to what percent of those eligible to be deceased donors donate, but the official government estimate is 75% (I think a range of 50-75% is probably credible), so even if all eligible deceased donors donated, there would still be an enormous shortfall in kidney transplants each year.