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Legislation to make organ donations automatic

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13567…21

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    #62
    Naos
    Registered Users Posts: 4,728 ✭✭✭Naos


    Great idea and about time.

    I also think if you're on the 'opt out' list then you should not be eligible for a donation if you need one.


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    #63
    Annasopra
    Registered Users Posts: 40,902 ✭✭✭✭Annasopra


    ants09 wrote: »
    The GDPR lists specific requirements for lawful consent requests, but must also be given with a clear affirmative action.

    In other words, individuals need a mechanism that requires a deliberate action to opt in, as opposed to pre-ticked boxes.

    Although the GDPR doesn’t specifically ban opt-out consent, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) says that opt-out options “are essentially the same as pre-ticked boxes, which are banned”.


    Does gdpr apply to dead people?

    It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was us, what did that make Me? After all, I'm one of Us. I must be. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things.

    Terry Pratchet



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    #64
    Rew
    Moderators, Sports Moderators Posts: 8,679 Mod ✭✭✭✭Rew


    prinzeugen wrote: »
    Its not clear cut. We all remember the emails when GDPR came in. There were 2 versions from sites etc..

    1 - If you do not reply to this we will remove you from our list

    2- If you do not reply we presume you are happy for us to retain your details.

    BBC Watchdog did a piece about it it and both are legal.

    There is a false assumption that GDRP made companies/institutions wipe your data.

    You still need to opt out in some cases.

    Its very clear, there is no GDPR issue here.

    GDPR is about data collection, retention and processing. Opting in/opt of organ donation in its self has nothing to do with GDPR. If they maintain a database associated with it then they will need to do that in a GDPR compliant way which is straight forward to do.


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    #65
    Mint Sauce
    Registered Users Posts: 29,294 ✭✭✭✭Mint Sauce


    Great idea, but dont take my eyes.

    I will be six foot in the ground, they will be of no use to me, but still dont take my eyes.

    Seriously though, dispite it being on my drivers licence, my next of kin can still make my wishes for me after I die. Thankfully they have been advised too,


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    #66
    Rew
    Moderators, Sports Moderators Posts: 8,679 Mod ✭✭✭✭Rew


    Joeytheparrot wrote: »
    Does gdpr apply to dead people?

    No, only living individuals.


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    #67
    seamus
    Registered Users Posts: 68,317 ✭✭✭✭seamus


    Ipso wrote: »
    Maybe introduce something where if you aren’t willing to donate you shouldn’t receive any organs. Eye for an eye etc
    It seems like a reasonable idea, but realistically the set of people who needs organs and the set of people who can donate organs will rarely overlap.

    It's not like blood donation; the odds of someone with CF having a liver that can be transplanted is pretty low after years of medication.

    And at the end of the day, the decision will always rest with the NOK. So John receives a heart in a transplant because he's on the donor list. He dies 20 years later and his wife is a battleaxe who refuses to allow his organs to be donated.

    What then?

    We need to remove the NOK's right to refuse; if the donor expressly consents while alive, then the NOK should not be permitted to refuse.


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    #68
    Hercule Poirot
    Registered Users Posts: 4,231 ✭✭✭Hercule Poirot


    Mint Sauce wrote: »
    Great idea, but dont take my eyes.

    I will be six foot in the ground, they will be of no use to me, but still dont take my eyes.

    Seriously though, dispite it being on my drivers licence, my next of kin can still make my wishes for me after I die. Thankfully they have been advised too,

    Erm, ok, we won't take your eyes then


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    #69
    weldoninhio
    Closed Accounts Posts: 14,311 ✭✭✭✭weldoninhio


    Guy:Incognito wrote: »
    How long? About the same length of time it took for other countries to monetise it. The info should be handy to get so I'll let you do the research...........

    Yes, because Ireland is in no way known for its cute hoorism.


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    #70
    Guy:Incognito
    Registered Users Posts: 38,247 ✭✭✭✭Guy:Incognito


    weldoninhio wrote: »
    Yes, because Ireland is in no way known for its cute hoorism.

    A vague statement? Well that's me sold. Reverse this, I no longer agree with organ donation.


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    #71
    weldoninhio
    Closed Accounts Posts: 14,311 ✭✭✭✭weldoninhio


    Guy:Incognito wrote: »
    A vague statement? Well that's me sold. Reverse this, I no longer agree with organ donation.

    If there is going to be an opt out, why not just switch the system and had a legally binding opt in, where the dead person's family can't over ride it.


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    #72
    seamus
    Registered Users Posts: 68,317 ✭✭✭✭seamus


    weldoninhio wrote: »
    If there is going to be an opt out, why not just switch the system and had a legally binding opt in, where the dead person's family can't over ride it.
    That's a more complex topic which impacts on property rights, and which may potentially require a referendum.

    Basically when you die, your body becomes nothing more than property. And legal ownership of that property passes to your next-of-kin. It is not possible for one person to tell another what to do with their property. I can sign as many documents as I like saying that my body has to be fed to be wild wolves in Scandinavia, but legally there is nothing which requires my family to carry out that. Once the body becomes property of my NOK, it is theirs to do with as they wish.

    This is why it impacts donation. If I say I want to donate, then that's nothing more than a wish. Whether to donate is up to my NOK, because it's their property. Not mine, or the state's. To implement a legally-binding opt-in system is therefore complex because you have to alter property laws in a very specific way. Which may not even be possible without unravelling centuries of common and case law.

    On the other hand, an opt-out system where it's assumed that the deceased wishes to donate unless they say otherwise means that every family will be asked if they wish to donate.

    At present families will really only be asked if the deceased has said they want to donate. If it's switched to opt-out, then everyone will be asked unless the deceased has stated otherwise.

    The family can still donate of course regardless of the deceased's wishes.


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    #73
    DonalK1981
    Registered Users Posts: 370 ✭✭DonalK1981


    work wrote: »
    Great and I hope this helps, opt out is a fantastic idea. It looks like the family can however prevent the donation. I would be mightily p!ssed if my wishes were for donation and they were not followed.

    You would haunt someone over it?


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    #74
    B.A._Baracus
    Registered Users Posts: 11,179 ✭✭✭✭B.A._Baracus


    A problem tho.
    You'd have family members suing, or least trying to, after someone got their organs removed. We never heard such thing, we should have been told before hand, what you mean the millions of euro spent on TV and advertising this? we never saw any etc.

    Gimme money. Rinse and repeat.


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    #75
    weldoninhio
    Closed Accounts Posts: 14,311 ✭✭✭✭weldoninhio


    seamus wrote: »
    That's a more complex topic which impacts on property rights, and which may potentially require a referendum.

    Basically when you die, your body becomes nothing more than property. And legal ownership of that property passes to your next-of-kin. It is not possible for one person to tell another what to do with their property. I can sign as many documents as I like saying that my body has to be fed to be wild wolves in Scandinavia, but legally there is nothing which requires my family to carry out that. Once the body becomes property of my NOK, it is theirs to do with as they wish.

    This is why it impacts donation. If I say I want to donate, then that's nothing more than a wish. Whether to donate is up to my NOK, because it's their property. Not mine, or the state's. To implement a legally-binding opt-in system is therefore complex because you have to alter property laws in a very specific way. Which may not even be possible without unravelling centuries of common and case law.

    On the other hand, an opt-out system where it's assumed that the deceased wishes to donate unless they say otherwise means that every family will be asked if they wish to donate.

    At present families will really only be asked if the deceased has said they want to donate. If it's switched to opt-out, then everyone will be asked unless the deceased has stated otherwise.

    The family can still donate of course regardless of the deceased's wishes.

    So if i say in my will that I want to donate all my money to a cat retirement home, can my NOK over ride that? Or does it go where I want because I prepared a legal document with my wishes after death??


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    #76
    Rew
    Moderators, Sports Moderators Posts: 8,679 Mod ✭✭✭✭Rew


    weldoninhio wrote: »
    So if i say in my will that I want to donate all my money to a cat retirement home, can my NOK over ride that? Or does it go where I want because I prepared a legal document with my wishes after death??

    NoK can go to court and get it overridden, happens a lot where someone gets written out of the will and then successfully challenges it in court after the person has died.


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    #77
    seamus
    Registered Users Posts: 68,317 ✭✭✭✭seamus


    weldoninhio wrote: »
    So if i say in my will that I want to donate all my money to a cat retirement home, can my NOK over ride that? Or does it go where I want because I prepared a legal document with my wishes after death??
    Your NOK can challenge the will on the basis that they have not been adequately provided for.

    It's a slightly different scenario anyway since the execution of your will/disposal of your estate is not automatically the responsibility of your NOK.

    Timing is what really makes this the difficult topic. When you actually die, there's all the the time is world to go dig out your will and figure out what to do next.

    When it comes time to donate organs, you may not actually be dead yet, or at the very minimum you're clinically dead and on life support. There isn't time to wait for your solicitor to come back from holidays and dig out your file find out what your will says about donation.

    Even if we assume that some level of national register can be set up so that a hospital can look up your PPSN and find out in a couple of minutes whether you've said yes or no, there's still scope for legal challenge. A family who can try to block it. If you go ahead and harvest organs and then later on it turns out that in fact the database was wrong, or you had been fooled into opting-in, or whatever, then there's a sh1tstorm right there.

    Is it possible for a legally-binding opt-in? Of course. Is it simple? Hell no.

    My understanding from reading various sources over the last few years, is that any kind of system where you have to actively opt-out, is far more effective at increasing donation rates than any system that makes it easier to opt-in.

    People are inherently lazy and won't actively opt-in unless someone pushes it in their face. Likewise they won't actively opt-out either unless they have strong feelings on the matter.
    By changing the "default" from "he didn't care enough about it to opt-in", to "he didn't care enough about it to opt-out", then you change the mindset.

    https://sparq.stanford.edu/solutions/opt-out-policies-increase-organ-donation


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    #78
    Bob24
    Registered Users Posts: 10,905 ✭✭✭✭Bob24


    Gadgetman496 wrote: »
    ORGAN donation after death will be automatic unless stated otherwise under new laws set to be drafted in next month.

    Health Minister Simon Harris will introduce the legislation to make Ireland an “opt-out country”.

    https://www.dublinlive.ie/news/legislation-make-organ-donations-automatic-15617891

    Strange society we live in whereby something like the GDPR makes it illegal to process someone’s personal data without their explicit consent (which I think is a good thing), but at the same time we are discussing the removal of that consent requirement to take organs out of that same person’s body after they die.

    To give a trivial exemple putting this into perspective: it seems strange and inconsistent to me that through its laws society requires my explicit consent for someone to keep a record of my IP address when I visit their website, but that at the same time my consent is assumed when it comes to removing my heart off my dead body.

    Don’t get me wrong, I think organ donation should be be encouraged, but I see it as deeply wrong to assume consent and instead it would IMO be better to find mechanisms to provide consent more easily (i.e. the goal should be to make sure donation always happens when a person clearly agrees with it and that formalities around consent don’t prevent it from happening, as opposed to making it happen when people don’t opt-out because they are either unsure of what the want or unaware of the out-out process, as seems to be the case here).


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    #79
    hgfj
    Registered Users Posts: 252 ✭✭hgfj


    My concern would be if you found yourself in a situation where you are on an operating table after say a car crash and you only have a 20% chance of survival IF the operation is a sucess, while in the next room someone else is waiting on a liver which will give them a 90 to a 100% chance of survival. What decisions will the doctors/surgeons make? Would they "allow" you to die for a better chance of someone elses survival? Would it come down to statistics?


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    #80
    runawaybishop
    Registered Users Posts: 9,500 ✭✭✭runawaybishop


    ants09 wrote: »
    The GDPR lists specific requirements for lawful consent requests, but must also be given with a clear affirmative action.

    In other words, individuals need a mechanism that requires a deliberate action to opt in, as opposed to pre-ticked boxes.

    Although the GDPR doesn’t specifically ban opt-out consent, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) says that opt-out options “are essentially the same as pre-ticked boxes, which are banned”.

    GDPR is irrelevant as legislation can make it exempt. Most government departments are exempt, the DSP for example specifically instructs its staff to never ask for consent as that gives the mistaken impression that you have a choice to your data being stored.


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    #81
    TheChizler
    Registered Users Posts: 9,428 ✭✭✭TheChizler


    hgfj wrote: »
    My concern would be if you found yourself in a situation where you are on an operating table after say a car crash and you only have a 20% chance of survival IF the operation is a sucess, while in the next room someone else is waiting on a liver which will give them a 90 to a 100% chance of survival. What decisions will the doctors/surgeons make? Would they "allow" you to die for a better chance of someone elses survival? Would it come down to statistics?
    I can pretty much guarantee that situation will not exist outside of TV.


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    #82
    weldoninhio
    Closed Accounts Posts: 14,311 ✭✭✭✭weldoninhio


    Ireland truly is a nanny state. Even when you die you still owe the government something. I'd be willing to be a donor for a payment of E50,000. This is massively below what it costs to keep someone on dialysis for a year. Otherwise, my body, my organs.


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    #83
    Skylinehead
    Registered Users Posts: 11,690 ✭✭✭✭Skylinehead


    weldoninhio wrote: »
    Otherwise, my body, my organs.

    Not once you're dead, and that's the case even before this legislation.


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    #84
    Irish Guitarist
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,736 ✭✭✭Irish Guitarist




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    #85
    seamus
    Registered Users Posts: 68,317 ✭✭✭✭seamus


    hgfj wrote: »
    My concern would be if you found yourself in a situation where you are on an operating table after say a car crash and you only have a 20% chance of survival IF the operation is a sucess, while in the next room someone else is waiting on a liver which will give them a 90 to a 100% chance of survival. What decisions will the doctors/surgeons make? Would they "allow" you to die for a better chance of someone elses survival? Would it come down to statistics?
    Organ donation doesn't work like that. You can't just move organs from any individual to any other individual.

    The figurative "someone in the next room" of course could be on the other side of the country, but it won't be a matter of "we have to make this decision in the next 10 minutes of both men will die!" dun dun dunnnn.

    Anyone waiting on an organ has been waiting months or years. They didn't roll into A&E today in sudden need of a new liver.

    So if you are on an operating table in urgent need of life-saving treatment, they are not going to delay that treatment for a few hours while they assess your suitability as a donor.

    There IS a valid argument that knowing they're a donor may influence the lengths a doctor will go to, to resuscitate a patient who's circling the drain. But in the opt-out system this is taken away: since every patient in resus is a potential donor, nobody is special. So they will all get an equal chance at resuscitation.


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    #86
    seamus
    Registered Users Posts: 68,317 ✭✭✭✭seamus


    weldoninhio wrote: »
    Ireland truly is a nanny state. Even when you die you still owe the government something.
    The government aren't taking your organs. Other human beings are using them to continue living.

    It's a bizarre point of view that using your organs when you're finished with them is "nanny state" and that you should be compensated for it. I can only assume that someone who thinks like this is deeply misanthropic.


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    #87
    jochenstacker
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 390 ✭✭jochenstacker


    weldoninhio wrote: »
    Ireland truly is a nanny state. Even when you die you still owe the government something. I'd be willing to be a donor for a payment of E50,000. This is massively below what it costs to keep someone on dialysis for a year. Otherwise, my body, my organs.

    You owe them nothing, you are donating something to help others.
    If you don't want to, even out of sheer spite, you can opt out. Most won't care and be happy to donate whatever is left.
    I really don't see the big deal.

    As for the point "relatives will sue!"
    There is an opt out. If someone can't be arsed to bring their affairs in order, that's their problem.
    The relatives can't do dick, because it's up to each person individually to make an informed choice, so TS.
    It is the right way to go.


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    #88
    weldoninhio
    Closed Accounts Posts: 14,311 ✭✭✭✭weldoninhio


    seamus wrote: »
    The government aren't taking your organs. Other human beings are using them to continue living.

    It's a bizarre point of view that using your organs when you're finished with them is "nanny state" and that you should be compensated for it. I can only assume that someone who thinks like this is deeply misanthropic.

    The government are legislating to take organs from people without expressed consent.


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    #89
    Ipso
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,995 ✭✭✭Ipso


    seamus wrote: »
    The government aren't taking your organs. Other human beings are using them to continue living.

    It's a bizarre point of view that using your organs when you're finished with them is "nanny state" and that you should be compensated for it. I can only assume that someone who thinks like this is deeply misanthropic.

    Also many of the peole who complain about the nanny state expect free healthcare, free education and magical govenment intervention to solve housing problems.


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    #90
    Guy:Incognito
    Registered Users Posts: 38,247 ✭✭✭✭Guy:Incognito


    weldoninhio wrote: »
    The government are legislating to take organs from people without expressed consent.

    Dead people. To give to sick people so they can live.

    Just opt out and keep your organ to rot in the ground if you don't want to help society then.


    If it produced figures like the Germany v Austria ones (12% v 99.98% donation rates) then I'm fine with people whinging in the background and ignoring them.


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    #91
    Ipso
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,995 ✭✭✭Ipso


    weldoninhio wrote: »
    The government are legislating to take organs from people without expressed consent.

    The assumption is no consent on lack of consent is consent


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