GESTIÓN EN SALUD PÚBLICA: BioEdge: England to adopt ‘opt-out’ system for organ donation

domingo, 3 de marzo de 2019

BioEdge: England to adopt ‘opt-out’ system for organ donation

BioEdge: England to adopt ‘opt-out’ system for organ donation

Bioedge

England to adopt ‘opt-out’ system for organ donation

by Michael Cook | 2 Mar 2019 | 1 comment

The British Parliament will soon pass a bill making all adults in England presumed organ donors unless they have explicitly opted out. Wales already has an opt-out system and the Scottish Parliament is debating the issue. Children and tourists will be exempt.

“We very much hope that once this new law comes into force in spring 2020, we will see similar results to those we have witnessed in Wales, with more people and families agreeing to donation, enabling more lifesaving transplants to take place,” John Forsythe, of NHS Blood and Transplant, told the New York Times.

The legislation will be known as Max and Keira's Law after a 9-year-old boy who received a heart transplant and the girl, also 9, who donated it.

Although surveys show that 80% of adults in England are in favour of organ donation, only 37% have registered to donate.

Michael Cook is editor of BioEdge.

Colombia is a country that flies under the radar as far as euthanasia goes. But it has one of the most progressive legal frameworks for euthanasia anywhere. (See article below.) Children over the age of 6 can request the right to die (with the approval of their parents). It may also be one of the jurisdictions where it is least used. Euthanasia has been permitted since 2015, but only 40 people have taken advantage of it -- according to official records. Unofficially, there may be many more. As in other countries, activist doctors who are impatient with red tape take the law into their own hands.

And bizarrely, Colombian voters have had no say in this momentous legal change. “We have not had a big national debate about this, and I’m not very happy about it," says a former Colombian health minister. “We need a public debate: We are not Belgium or Holland – this is at odds with people’s beliefs and mode of thought.” It would be good for a team of bioethcists to study the situation in Colombia with the same rigour as they have in Belgium, the Netherlands, or Canada.