To Opt In Or To Opt Out

So we are now into the second week of blog posting!
Since my last post, I've learned quite a lot about what type of organ transplant system our country and other countries, such as the ones in Europe, have. The United States goes by the opt in system where only those who have given explicit consent are donors. Countries in Europe, like Belgium, Austria and France, adhere to the opt out system where everyone who has not refused is considered a donor. These European countries actually have high donor rates, for example Austria has 21 donors per million people while Germany, who has an opt out system, only has 16 donors per million. Though these numbers seem low, they do make a huge difference in making someone else's life better and possibly saving them from a fate that could be prevented with the help of an organ donation.

A fun fact that I learned recently is that Wales will actually be adopting a soft opt out system for organ and tissue donation on December 1, 2015. Anyone who does not register their decision by this date stating whether or not they want to opt in or opt out, they will be treated as having no objection to being a donor. On their website, which there is a link for in my works cited page if you want to take a look at it for yourself, there is a huge countdown starting with the total amount of hours to the total amount of seconds until December 1. This countdown is very interesting and a cool idea to me, personally.

After researching about other countries that have the opt out system, I have caught myself developing a fire in my stomach that makes me want to scream at the top of my lungs that this system does more help than harm. If the United States adopted the opt in system and left behind the opt out system, organ donations could raise up to about 50%. The American Kidney Fund, along with other organizations, are already pushing for a change in the opt in system currently in place.

Even though I have been researching about this topic for a couple of weeks now, I still want to keep researching. I want to get my hands on as much information as I can get before I move ahead with my plan of compiling what information I have and polling people around my community about which organ donation system they would prefer more. If you have not noticed already, I have added a static page that I will dedicate to people I will and have come in contact with that either need an organ, received one, or donated one to someone else. Throughout the duration of this project, I will be doing my best to update this new page in order to spread awareness of organ donation and that there are more people in the world that are in the tight situation of being in need of an organ or even dealing with the option of being a donor or not.