Presumed consent in organ transplantation is unnecessary and ethically unsound

Professor John Fabre, Past President of the British Transplant Society, has written an extremely well argued case against presumed consent in organ donation stating that it is both clinically unnecessary and that it would compromise the ethics of clinical practice. The author argues in this article that rather than legislating for consented donors we should be addressing the misgivings and misunderstandings of families in order to improve their consent rate.  If the consent rate for deceased donation could be raised in the UK from around 55% to the Spanish rate of 85% this would have an enormous impact on the number of organs available.

This article is recommended reading for all those associated with organ transplantation.