Ethics Group Wants Mandated Organ Donations Upon Death

A social ethics organization says 2,000 people a year die awaiting organ transplants and proposes that everyone’s organs should be made available at death, by law, unless the person or a relative objects in advance.

People should come to see organ donation “as a social duty, as an act on behalf of our fellows and the community . . . that is to be routinely expected” and that would reduce “the wastage of a precious human resource,” said the Communitarian Network.

The network is a think tank that believes that society gives too much priority to individual rights and too little attention to individual responsibilities.

In addition to those who die for want of an organ, thousands more endure painful and expensive treatment to survive with defective organs, said James L. Nelson, a health ethics specialist and chief author of the proposal.

His plan specified that people could opt not to have their organs removed if they objected on religious or philosophical grounds or simply found the idea disturbing.

Their wishes would be noted in a national computer registry, on their driver’s license and when they check into a hospital.

The idea drew an argument from Andrew Kimbrell, policy director of the Foundation on Economic Trends, a watchdog group on bioethics issues and author of a forthcoming book on transplants, “The Human Body Shop.”

“Currently we can give our body as a gift, and that is a positive choice,” he said. “But with something as intimate and with as many religious and ethical implications as the human body, we don’t want the state to make that decision.”