Organ Conscription and Greater Needs

Since its inception, the institution of postmortem organ transplantation has faced the problem of organ shortage: Every year, the demand for donor organs vastly exceeds supply, resulting in the deaths of approximately 8,000 individuals in the United States alone.¹ This is in large part due to the fact that the United States, for the most part, operates under an "opt-in" policy in which people are given the opportunity to voluntarily opt-in to organ donation by registering as organ donors.² In the United States, a person's organs will not be removed for transplantation purposes unless she has registered as a donor or her family gives their consent for organ removal.³ Jointly, these policies generate a situation where we do not retrieve as many organs as we could.