Wales has become the first place in the UK to use opt-out organ donation.
The National Assembly for Wales voted yesterday to change the existing system, in which people must give explicit consent to donate an organ. Now, any adult over 18 will have to donate their organs unless they have opted out of the system.
About 600 people die in the UK each year while waiting for an organ donation. The new law is predicted to increase organ availability by 25 per cent.
Eric Johnson at Columbia Business School in New York has analysed the effectiveness of the two types of systems worldwide. In countries where donors opt in, consent rates range from 4 to 27 per cent. All of the opt-out countries, which include France and Sweden, had rates above 85 per cent (Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.1091721). "If you frame the question differently, people have a different perspective," he says.
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