Organ donation becomes opt-out in France

Re:Organ donation becomes opt-out in France by ghaff on Monday January 02, 2017 @10:38AM (#13301687)

Defaults are an extremely powerful policy lever--sometimes worryingly powerful.

FWIW, Richard Thaler, who played a big role in creating the field of behavioral economics, has argued in favor of "mandated choice" for organ donations at the time people renew their drivers license [1]. His concern with default opt-in, as I recall from one of his books, is that defaults are so powerful that they may not really create implied consent.

[1]http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/27/business/economy/27view.ht...

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Re:Organ donation becomes opt-out in France by Freak_NL on Monday January 02, 2017 @10:48AM (#13301753)

Mandated choice sounds like a very useful mechanism, but I would fear that for many people being confronted with this choice when you are renewing your driver's licence means defaulting for the 'safe' option of non-donor.

The tricky thing about organ donation is that the default choice tends to be 'postpone deciding'. For society at large this is harmful. Hypothetically, if you could ask someone's ghost after they've died on the hospital table, I bet most people would gladly donate their organs (perhaps with the occasional “Oh but can you please leave my face untouched?” thrown in) after accepting their untimely demise. But we can't. So with opt-in and a with a mandated binary choice at a set time you go for the safe option, which is 'non-donor' (“I'll change it after I've thought it through.”).

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Re:Organ donation becomes opt-out in France by michaelt on Monday January 02, 2017 @11:23AM (#13302012)

  Hypothetically, if you could ask someone's ghost [...]
  I bet most people would gladly donate their organs

Don't you think it's a bit of a stretch to imagine you know someone's preferences better than they do when they've explicitly stated their preferences through a forced choice mechanism?

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Re:Organ donation becomes opt-out in France by MrZongle2 on Monday January 02, 2017 @11:23AM (#13302019)

"Mandated choice sounds like a very useful mechanism, but I would fear that for many people being confronted with this choice when you are renewing your driver's licence means defaulting for the 'safe' option of non-donor."

But at that point, they have made a choice (as ill-informed as it may be) as opposed to one being made for them.

I'm an organ donor. I encourage others to do the same. That said, when a government makes choices about your body for you -- even if the choice seems "right" -- I find it a bit unsettling.

Freedom is measured best when the "wrong" option is chosen. It also illuminates those who just give such freedom lip service.

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Re:Organ donation becomes opt-out in France by ghaff on Monday January 02, 2017 @11:18AM (#13301969)

I don't disagree with any of that. The alternative though with opt out is that you're effectively not giving many people a choice because they don't get around to making one. Maybe that's ok as a matter of policy but it has both philosophical and practical issues.

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Re:Organ donation becomes opt-out in France by loup-vaillant on Monday January 02, 2017 @12:14PM (#13302504)

Mandated choice is good when consent (implied or not) is more important than the outcome. Organ donations are different. I'd rather save lives first and ask questions later.

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Re:Organ donation becomes opt-out in France by tomp on Monday January 02, 2017 @01:31PM (#13303221)

Then why allow a choice at all?

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Re:Organ donation becomes opt-out in France by ceejayoz on Monday January 02, 2017 @02:01PM (#13303461)

Think of it as an "advanced settings" tab that 99% of people don't use or care about.

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Re:Organ donation becomes opt-out in France by loup-vaillant on Monday January 02, 2017 @06:27PM (#13305370)

To avoid rocking the boat too much. There is a difference between the opt-out ruse and open coercion. The latter is more likely to cause problems I don't want to deal with.

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