Meeting of the Parliament 09 February 2016
Yes. I totally agree. Also, under the bill, the relatives are consulted and their wishes are taken into account as well.
For us in Scotland—a country that has already improved public education and awareness in the health professions—the next step is surely to look at new ways of increasing donation rates through legislative and cultural change and to give serious consideration to a soft opt-out. It is not just a matter of changing the law and moving towards a position of presumed consent. It is also about changing attitudes and creating a culture of openness and understanding in which we can more readily talk before we die about what we want to happen to our bodies. There should be rigorous safeguards to make sure that liberty and choice are protected and that presumed consent does not mean taking away choice.
I am not a member of the Health and Sport Committee, but I see that many of its deliberations have focused on how to ascertain what the individual’s choices are. Families should be consulted even when their loved ones have failed to opt out, to establish whether they are aware of any objections and whether proceeding with organ donation would cause distress.
I note that the committee also discussed whether the proposed changes would lead to the desired increase in organ donations. BMA Scotland, which supports the principles of the bill, accepts that it is notoriously difficult to assess the impact of opt-out legislation on donation rates. However, it also pointed to the example of Wales, where only 3 per cent have opted out from organ donation, and we can look to other examples around the world where the legislation is different yet donation levels are higher.
Opting out is not new. Across Europe, there are plenty of examples of countries that have successfully managed opt-out systems of organ donation for many years. As we have heard, the committee visited Spain, which has the highest level of organ donation in the world.