Automatic organ donation

Well, thanks for joining and for your opening statement. It's nice to know the direction in which you are going. Core Argument | Organ donation saves lives. There is a failure risk but especially for organ donations from deceased donors, the risk is solely on the receiver's side and therefore irrelevant (if you have nothing to loose any chance is better than no chance). Automatic organ donation is going to raise the amount of available organs ( -see 1| Lost Chance). More available organs means better suitable organs can be found and that lowers the failure risk. It also means that more people can get organ donations. The third core aspect is that more organ donations from deceased patients reduces the need for living donors that might be harmed during the procedure or have to live with medication afterwards. Automatic organ donation conclusively enhances the overall statistical chances of transplantation patients. 1 | Lost chance Between 1988 and 2012 the amount of donors has slowly risen from about 12,000 to nearly 15,000 donors, while the waiting lists have exploded from under 20,000 to over 170,000 patients in need [1 Graphic p.7]. Awareness campaigns obviously cannot help to close the gap that is growing every year. This is a lost chance because of two main reasons. First, the younger people, with organs that would be the healthiest and best options for patients, tend to be less likely to share their believes about organ donation (67%) than later generations (e. g. 82% for those 35 to 54) [1 Executive Summary, p. 3] with organs that might be already rather damaged. This means that in case of an accident parents face the decision to decide for their children, rather then just communicating their wishes. In such situations the sentimental desire to bury a whole child can overcome the rational importance of organ donation and might put the doctors in the unmoral position to put pressure on the parents. This is especially tragic because nearly 95% support organ donation [1 p. 13]. Waiting for the approval just costs time that patients and organs don't have. 2 | Abuse The system of automatic organ donation rather discourages abuse than encourages, because doctors don't have to convince relatives to approve organ donation. If more organs from deceased people can be used, the pressure to switch off live-support decreases. Another form of abuse, Organ-harvesting, is best fought by raising the overall chances to get and survive a transplant. 3 | Ideological Concept Living organ donation is certainly brave. You take a risk to help someone. Usually this is a person you know for that matter [2 Kidneys: Living donor relationship to recipients] so one might say that a certain selfishness needs to be considered. Still, nearly twice as many kidney donations come from deceased donors [2] which shows that this is even most relevant for those organs that can be received from living donors. The system of opting into organ donation promotes the idea that someone, who donates his organs after death, is a hero and great moral example. The automatic organ donation promotes that those, who opt-out, show poor morals. As shown ( -see 1 | Lost chance) the positive encouragement did not really help to raise organ donors in numbers so it might be time, to show that there is nothing heroic in giving something away, that you don't need. But rather that we have to actively consider, that we might support another persons death by opting out. [1] HRSA (2012) National Survey of Organ Donation Attitudes and Behavior http://organdonor.gov... [2] National Kidney Foundation, Statistics, Retrieved 5th of June 2014 http://www.kidney.org...