Organ Donation: Expressed Consent vs. Presumed Consent

The organ donation system should be based on the form of expressed consent, because the expressed consent policy respects patients’ bodily autonomy. Competent patients give expressed consent by signing authorization which allows the doctors to proceed with a certain medical treatment. The applying of this consent to organ donation makes organ donation a voluntary act. More specifically, individuals will not become organ donors without clear statements. It respects a human’s right in making decisions over his or her own life. The expressed consent policy not only shows respect to the competent patients, but also guarantees the willingness of incompetent people. Expressed consent allows the immediate family members to make the decision of organ donation for people who cannot make verbal or textual authorization. The aspiration of the deceased has a great chance to be expressed by the decision made by his or her family members since they are the closest people to the deceased. However, presumed consent policy, instead, assumes that people who did not make explicit objection statements are willing to donate their organs. This policy is clearly a violation of human's bodily autonomy especially for accidentally dead people based on the reason that the government is overly involved in citizens’ decision-making by assuming possession of their body parts. Some presumed consent supporters might argue from the utilitarianism view. For example, they might state that the dead people’s organs are not useful for them anyway, so it is valid for people to assume that those organs would be used to benefit other patients. However, the act of mistaken removal is far worse than wasting an effective organ, based on the reason that the mistaken removal act violates the moral standards while being a non-organ donor is not morally wrong.