OPT IN OR OPT OUT? Many people are on waiting lists for organ donation but die waiting as not enough organs are made available. A contributing factor is the way consent is given for such donations. There are two methods of consent: opt -in and opt-out. An opt in method means that the public have to purposefully decide to be an organ donor and this is usually recorded on the person's Driver Licence. This is how organ donation currently takes place in countries such as New Zealand, UK, Ireland and Australia. Alternatively an opt-out methods means that by default everyone is considered an organ donor except if an individual specically does not want to be an donor and can be removed from the donor registry. Countries such as Spain and Austria have this system and tehre have been discussions in the Irish press on the merits of adopting an opt-out system. 'Opt-out legislative systems dramatically increase eective rates of consent for donation. For example, Germany, which uses an opt-in system, has an organ donation consent rate of 12% among its population, while Austria, a country with a very similar culture and economic development, but which uses an opt-out system, has a consent rate of 99.98%.' en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_donation [Show Less]