The Legality of Organ Donation in Canada - Essay Example

The number of organ donors is just about 14-15 individuals out of every 1 million people, but organ transplantation remains the primary treatment for the end-stage renal disease which many individuals are suffering from.

Research by Baxter and Smerden (2000) predicts that the need for organs will increase by 152% over the next two decades. They also project a 221% increase in the number of needed organs over the next 40 years. The projected increase in the number of organs available for transplant, however, will be only 12% in the next 20 years.
Seeing the exponential increase in these figures can become quite disturbing when one considers that roughly 250 people die while just waiting for an organ needed for their transplant.

Organ procurement can become a complex medical process but this is usually made even more difficult because of the moral and legal entanglements which accompany it. The following factors may also be contributing to the shortage of organ donors:
• prevailing medical policies or practices are inhibiting the other sources of potential organ donors;
• the medical staff may be unwilling to obtain legal consent from the relatives of a probable donor;
• the existence of ethical issues for special cases with regards to consent (i.e. mentally disabled people, infants);
• advancements in health care and medical technology, as well as changes in lifestyle, are saving individuals who may have been qualified as donors in the past, thus limiting the number of potential donors;
• the competency of attending medical staff may be inadequate in identifying suitable donors;
• laws which encourage the safety of individuals (i.e. seatbelt and helmet laws) have decreased the number of vehicular accidents which might yield probable donors;
• some hospitals might be unable to meet the financial requirements to maintain organ identification programs and surgical operating rooms;
• the general public may be unwilling to donate tissues and organs because of a lack of faith in the medical system especially in its ability to procure organs;
• there may be a lack of education about the importance of tissue and organ donation; and
• there has been no legislation seeking to give incentives, compensation, or recognition for organ donors.

As mentioned above, the donor screening system or policy implemented by hospitals may be questionable in itself. Acceptable organ donors have generally either been living or neurologically dead persons. When a hospital makes use of these qualifications, the sources of plausible organ replacements are immediately diminished.
When dealing with living donors, the cases involving mentally incapacitated individuals and terminally ill or deformed infants have caused a continuous debate, mostly delving on ethical issues especially those concerning consent.