‘Opt-out donor system won’t work’

Fear of being sued by next-of-kin means surgeons will not remove organs from deceased donors against the family’s wishes even if Ireland introduces an “opt-out” system of donation, it has been claimed.

Philip Watt, chairman of the Irish Donor Network (IDN), said that replacing the existing “opt-in” or explicit consent approach with an opt-out or presumed consent system would create legal difficulties for doctors and was not the best approach to boosting organ donation rates.

“Imagine a surgeon turning around to the parents of a child killed in a road traffic accident and saying ‘we’re preparing to harvest your child’s organs’, and the parents say ‘no you’re not’ and the surgeon saying ‘well we have the power to do so’. There would be uproar. It would only have to happen once and the whole sense of donation being a ‘gift of life’ is gone.”