Presently, in parts of Canada, donors must register as organ donors in order to be identified as a donor; this is referred to as explicit consent or “opt-in” (Ripper, 2012). Whereas, in several European countries, individuals are donors unless they say they don’t want to be one; this is labelled as presumed consent or “opt-out” (Ripper, 2012). In Simon Rippon’s article, “How to Reverse the Organ Shortage”, he claims that theoretically there are numerous approaches to regulating the consent systems for collecting organ donations, however, they may threaten patient autonomy and rights (Rippon, 2012). In addition to analyzing the “opt-in” and “opt-out” systems, Rippon also disputes the presumptive approach for organ donation. To my understanding,…show more content… Speaking about this, the presumptive approach is when a representative visits dying patients and their families (next of kin) and presents persuasive knowledge about the advantages of organ donation, designed to obtain explicit consent from the patients (Rippon, 2012).
Incidentally, many countries have low donation rates and conceptualize what can be done to raise these rate in order to save the large amount of patients waiting for surgery. According to Rippon, the answer is to shift to a system of presumed consent (Rippon, 2012). Additionally, Rippon recognizes that many people do not completely understand “opt-out” for organ donation and as a result when confronted with the idea are not able to logically deal with making a [potential] adjustment to the system (Rippon, 2012). In fact, Rippon agrees that patient autonomy is the biggest component when deciding if organ donation happens, and although collecting explicit consent may be preferred [due to status quo], it might not always be