And so organ donation rates are pretty low. Donors provide a public good: they increase everyone else's chance of getting an organ if they need one, but don't get much out of it other than the knowledge that they're potentially helping others. Non-donors have equal access to organs should they need one. It's a sharing club that doesn't punish members for failing to share; takers gonna take.
Israel's solution: the Priority Law. Organ donors get extra points in the priority queue should they ever need an organ transplant. And they had to navigate a lot of the same ethical issues that New Zealand faces. Consider the parallels here to certain aspects of Maori concerns around tapu:
Orthodox Israelis opposed to organ harvesting on religious grounds have called the system discriminatory. But Lavee argues that the willingness of those same people to accept donated organs ultimately dissuaded potential donors from participating in the organ pool. “There was a dismay among the Israeli population that there were many, many free riders,” he explained. “Why should people donate if their organs would go to people who would never donate themselves?”It isn't a full no-give-no-take system. Instead, donors simply get priority over non-donors. And, beautifully, the families of donors also get priority.
Launched in April 2012, the new Israeli system grants first priority for transplants to living donors and the family members of donors—who, in the event of brain death, make the ultimate decision whether to donate their kin’s organs. Registered donors of three years or more receive second priority; family members of registered donors receive a third tier of priority.
The system confers an advantage to candidates in the same tier of need; it never enables transplant candidates to supersede needier counterparts. Priority can’t catapult Status 2 recipients into the heart-transplant Status 1 list, but it can take them to the top of Status 2. With other organs, like kidneys, where a point system assigns values weighing age, waiting time, and compatibility create a 0 to 18 score, signing up as a donor can add a 1- to 5-point boost.Results?
In 2013, the first full year of the new system, there were a record number of transplants in Israel; meanwhile, transplants received by Israeli patients abroad fell to a quarter of their 2007 peak. Most of what continues is the result of lawful allocations many nations offer foreign transplant candidates. Another feature of the 2008 Organ Transplant Act—full reimbursement to living donors for lost work time, and health and life insurance for five years—has helped spur donations of kidneys, and lobes of liver and lungs. Between 2011 and 2013, the number of Israeli living organ donors increased by 67 percent over the preceding three-year period, and the Israeli transplant waiting list contracted in 2013.It certainly hasn't abolished the waiting list. But it's helped. New Zealand could well save a lot of lives by following the Israeli example. Otago University hand-wringers prefer deaths to incentives; it would be nice if Parliament could pay a bit less attention to them.
Previously:
- Al Roth and Finn the Human
- Israel as example: Organ donations
- Coercion everywhere: organs edition
- Some evidence on the effects of compensation for blood donation
- The Price of Marrow
- Organ supply
- Compensate cadaveric organ donors with free funerals. It's odd that Otago can cover a cremation subsidy for those leaving their bodies to science, but we can't compensate organ donors for similar donations.
- Encourage LifeSharers as a way of boosting donation rates rather than try to stomp on it [see also here].
- Consider the other steps taken by Israel: priority access to donated organs for those signing on as organ donors. See here and here.
- Small steps towards a better world
- Organ incentives
- Organ nudges
- Organ rights
- Free funerals
- Talkin' 'bout organs
- Overcome your repugnance
- Feisty comments on organs
- Encouraging news
- Misleading?
- Reasonable nudge
- Price seems high: organ prices edition
- The moral case for kidney markets
- Al Roth's Nobel
Its certainly a strange world when you have people who are not prepared (on moral/religious/ethical grounds) to donate, but are willing to accept the donations of others. Wonder how they reconcile that!
ReplyDeleteDeciding whether or not to be an organ donor is a really low consequence thing. Either way, you're no better or worse off. So you don't think about it much and if morals or religion or ethnic stuff leans towards squeemishness, you say no. Deciding whether to receive an organ is a really high consequence thing. In those kinds of environments, most sane people put the irrational stuff in the garbage bin, though some Christian Scientists seem more than happy to kill their kids by choosing prayer over medicine. On average, we'd expect people to be more likely to make the sane and rational choice in the high consequence environment rather than the low consequence environment.
ReplyDeleteI can imagine a number of ethnic groups who believe in being "whole" when buried would oppose organ donation (and they oppose cremation also). That's why I rather liked the Israeli approach - it creates a club. Join the club and share the benefits. A bit like insurance maybe. Which is why I have approved in recent times when post-disaster relief funds have declined any but basic support to non-insured people.
ReplyDeleteI saw in some licence review that I am a donor, and that many New Zealanders are. When my Thai wife filled in the forms for her New Zealand licence, she asked what an organ donor is, and she was revolted by the idea. Incidentally to tell you what a bloody good country we have here, two years after her introduction to New Zealand and a Resident Visa, you NZ sent her a a voting form. She told me she understood the word conservative.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand in Thailand these morons fine me for overstay Visa while I am nurturing their subjects.
They like to kill about 20,000 people in road accidents in Thailand each year, and it means nothing to them . No donor transfers in Thailand , look this is an International hospital you are going to die, pay here
can't see how some can refuse to donate on strong principle but will accept a donated organ.
ReplyDelete