Proposal Would Affect Organ Donation

By Joann Groff

Correspondent

November 23, 2003

Nearly 30 people packed into a Los Robles Rehabilitation Center classroom in Thousand Oaks on Friday night to hear a man tell them something they had been hoping to hear -- there is hope.

Members of an organ transplant support group and other attendees listened as David Courtney spoke about an initiative being proposed across the country that would have a significant impact on the long waiting lists for people needing life-saving organ transplants.

The presumed consent policy would consider everyone an organ donor unless they opted out. Instead of choosing to be a donor by placing a red sticker on a driver's license, a person would need to specify they didn't want to donate their organs.

Twenty-one countries, including Spain, France, Norway and Sweden, operate under presumed consent laws. The opt-out rate is only 2 percent, Courtney said.

According to a study conducted by Texas Tech University, 85 percent of Americans say they are in favor of organ donation, but Courtney said only 46 percent have signed their donor cards.

"We have hope," Courtney told the crowd. "We really do have hope. I don't believe presumed consent is going to be the do-all, fix-all. But it is going to have a very significant effect."

Courtney, 46, was diagnosed with emphysema in 1997 after having suffered from respiratory problems for several years. He must use oxygen and is on a waiting list for a lung transplant. Courtney, who lives with his wife in San Antonio, drives across the country to publicize the issue of presumed consent.

Members of the Presumed Consent Foundation Inc., of which Courtney is vice president and director of public relations, have chosen to focus their initial efforts on California, Texas and New York, hoping other states might follow suit. Texas and New York have already drafted presumed consent bills, which are slated to hit the U.S. Senate floor next year. No California legislator has yet to propose such a bill.

"I think it's because they are scared their people may react badly to it," Courtney said. "Unfortunately even though they know it's right, they are politicians, and they are scared about what the public will say about it."

Courtney acknowledges what he calls the "knee-jerk reaction" that such a law would take away people's rights. He believes it would honor a person's wishes even more than the current practice, where distraught relatives can, and often do, override a deceased family member's decision.

Despite the belief that presumed consent would increase the number of available organs, some people still have reservations. Donna Nofziger-Plank, professor of biology at Pepperdine University in Malibu, said although it might reap positive results, there are defects in the plan.

"Obviously, if you increase the pool, you increase the matches you will get," Nofziger-Plank said. "If this could help to alleviate the crisis of a vast amount of people who have been waiting for years for an organ, I think it is a great idea. But, you also need to recognize that we have a tradition of consent in this country. This is not the way physicians treat matters like this. It goes completely against the norm."

Despite the opposition, Courtney and members of Transplant Recipients International Organization (TRIO) say they will fight to educate people about the difference the presumed consent policy could make. They said they hope the law is changed in time to affect the 83,000 people in the United States currently on waiting lists for organs.

"Everyone deserves an organ, a second chance, just like a lot of us got," said TRIO member and liver transplant recipient Jackie Colleran. "They deserve to hug someone, they deserve to see their grandchildren graduate. They deserve it just as much as we do."

Copyright © 2001 The E.W. Scripps Company.

This article posted December 27, 2003.