On 1 December 2015, Wales will unilaterally become the first country of the United Kingdom to introduce an opt-out system for organ donation. Political leaders in Scotland and Northern Ireland are debating similar legislation, and pressure will mount for England to jump on the opt-out bandwagon.Many supportive organisations are keen for change, including the BMA, which has long advocated the me...

Chile, a middle-income country, recently joined Israel and Singapore as the world's only countries to require reciprocity as a precondition for organ transplantation. The Chilean reform includes opt-out provisions designed to foster donation and priority for organ transplantation for registered people. Although the reform has had serious difficulties in achieving its mission, it can be reviewed...

BACKGROUND The degree of involvement by the next-of-kin in deceased organ procurement worldwide is unclear. We investigated the next-of-kin's authority in the procurement process in nations with either explicit or presumed consent. METHODS We collected data from 54 nations, 25 with presumed consent and 29 with explicit consent. We characterized the authority of the next-of-kin in the decision...

One policy tool that could be deployed to increase organ donation rates is legislative defaults. Currently, there are two legislative regimes: “informed consent”, in which an explicit declaration makes the person a potential organ donor; and “presumed consent”, in which an explicit declaration is required for not being a potential donor. In this study, we examine how an institutional setting, n...

Two types of legislation underlie cadaveric organ donations: presumed consent (PC) and informed consent (IC). In informed consent countries, people are only donors when deceased if they registered to do so while alive. Conversely, in presumed consent countries, anybody is a potential donor when deceased. People have thus to register if they do not want to donate their body. PC has always been p...

BACKGROUND Genetic databases are becoming increasingly common as a means of determining the relationship between lifestyle, environmental exposures and genetic diseases. These databases rely on large numbers of research subjects contributing their genetic material to successfully explore the genetic basis of disease. However, as all possible research questions that can be posed of the data are ...

Organ donation after cardiac or circulatory death (DCD) has been introduced to increase the supply of transplantable organs. In this paper, we argue that the recovery of viable organs useful for transplantation in DCD is not compatible with the dead donor rule and we explain the consequential ethical and legal ramifications. We also outline serious deficiencies in the current consent process fo...