It seems that the UK Government is considering implementing on opt-out organ donor registry.

The principle behind this idea is that everybody is considered a potential organ donor, unless they specifically register their non-consent for their organs to be used.

This model us already being used with great success in Belgium and Spain, where according to the news report from Sky News, has tripled the organ donation rate.

I’d love to see something like this happen here in Australia, where I live, although there are a couple of things which would need to be taken into consideration before such a system would work:

• What about people who have English as a second language? Would they be considered to have consented as donors because they didn’t understand their rights and obligations under an opt-out system
• People under the age of 18 would need to be considered to have specifically given non-consent

All in all though, I think that this is a positive move, which should be considered by more countries.

What do you think?