Week 3 - Summarising the Debate

My topic for my position paper is "Only individuals who are already registered as organ donors should be eligible to receive an organ donation." This, like all the topics for this assignment, has a variety of arguments surrounding it.

There are many facets of this argument and one facet is how successful it would be in different locations. On one side of this is a source titled 'Increasing organ donation by presumed consent and allocation priority: Chile' (Zúñiga-Fajuri, 2015) which provides the example of Chile as somewhere it has been a successful policy. On the other side there is an article titled 'Demographic and Socioeconomic Factors Influencing Public Attitudes Toward a Presumed Consent System for Organ Donation Without and With a Priority Allocation Scheme' (Tumin, Tafran, Mutalib, Satar, Said, Adnan & Lu, 2015) which provides Malaysia as an example of a location where this system would experience very little success.

Source 1

This source has two main points in support of this system. The first is that it would increase organ donations. Both Israel and Singapore are used as examples of where the system has been in place long enough to see a positive trend in donation rates over the time priority has been given to those willing to donate. It is also mentioned that by providing an incentive there is a stronger motivation to donate which will therefore lead to an increase in donation rates. The second point is that it is a more morally fair system. This source refers to the reciprocation of organs as "a base moral requisite" (pp. 200) and claims that "a fair concept of justice calls for reciprocal altruism" (pp. 200). This source also points out that to prioritize who gets organs isn't exclusion but that it is just a system to help select a recipient when there is more than one person waiting for an organ. A final relevant point this source makes on the note of cultural differences is that cultural changes begin with changes in law. Overall this source has a fairly strong argument in the sense that it makes concise and clear points, however, it is lacking in supporting statistics to back up these points.

Source 2

The overall point of the source is that systems such as this would not be immediately successful as they have been elsewhere because Malaysian people have different opinions surrounding this idea. One fact this source includes is that 34% of Malaysians are willing to donate their organs. After performing a study they report that 54.6% would object to donating organs. This is fairly divided but in other sources on this topic statistics from other countries are always at least slightly more in support of the system. The lack of support is attributed to the "absence of public trust in the medical system and the absence of a well-established donation and transplant infrastructure" (pp. 3). This source has far more statistical information but its focus is more on the idea of a presumed consent system so finding relevant information is more difficult and the argument is less specific. 

The reasons these sources have each taken the positions they have is because of their views of what is successful and the various factors surrounding organ donation in the areas they are focusing on. The first source is supporting it because they are focusing on a country where it has successfully been implemented and they have strong opinions on the morality of it. The second source is less supportive because they are focusing on a country that doesn't agree with the system and they are focusing primarily on the statistics rather than their opinions of the morality of the system. 

References:

• Tumin, M., Tafran, K., Mutalib, M., Satar, N., Said, S., Adnan, W., & Lu, Y. (2015, October). Demographic and Socioeconomic Factors Influencing Public Attitudes Toward a Presumed Consent System for Organ Donation Without and With a Priority Allocation Scheme. Medicine, 94(42), e1713. doi:10.1097/MD.0000000000001713

• Zúñiga-Fajuri, A. (2015, March). Increasing Organ Donation by Presumed Consent and Allocation Priority: Chile. Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 93(3), 199-202. doi:10.2471/BLT.14.139535