I live in Flanders, Belgium and we have an opt-out system of sorts. Everyone is a donor, unless official objections were made. That sounds great, but doctors need to ascertain if there are no objections, even informal ones.

So it kind of boils down to doctors still having to ask your next of kin. But - according to data from UZ Leuven, one of our biggest hospitals - asking ‘are there any objections to the normal course of events’ works better than ‘do you wish to donate you loved ones organs’. Especially during a time of grief. It says Belgium has about 30 donors per million, whereas Germany and The Netherlands have about 15. (Data from 2024)

Because of this system you can still also officially state that your organs are to be donated if possible. And apparently you can do so from the age of 12 onwards. If you do so, no questions are asked and no one is able to object.

Tl;dr In Belgium we have an opt-out system, but it’s not bulletproof. And it doesn’t result in an enormous amount of donations. There are still waiting lists, though there are more donations than in some of our neighbouring countries. Reality is messy!

There was a scandal in the US where bodies being donated to ‘science’ were used for munitions testing by the us military. So the “who receives said body” is very important.

Great post! Definitely unpopular on every level, and with a solid explanation of your reasoning.

I don’t agree, not in the way it’s presented, but it’s still an awesome post.

The reason I don’t agree is that it isn’t practical. Well, not in the way it would need to be to make it useful.

See, it’s not enough that a person be a donor for their organs to be useful. They have to die in the right place, at the right time, and in a way that doesn’t otherwise prevent viability. The difficulties of matching a donor to a living recipient isn’t really limited by people checking the box to be a donor. Not opting in just pushes the decision off to the next of kin. Making it opt out isn’t going to solve the limitations, so there’s no need to deal with all the legal rigamarole to get a system for opt-out in place, much less mandatory.

As far as donating to science goes, the limitation is less about donors again. It’s proximity vs usefulness vs cost. You’d first have to overcome the social factor where the kin of the dead have a valid claim to determine disposition of remains, which is a huge barrier when trying to enact it.

But they you still run into being able to get a body to a “science” in a reasonable timeframe. Which isn’t always possible. If I die right now, the chances of me getting to a program that can prepare my body for much of anything before decomposition would set in is low. Not impossible, just difficult because even that teaching hospital in the next county doesn’t use cadavers for education, or experimentation.

I’m too far away from any of the “body farms” for use in that field of research. Even if decomposition wasn’t a factor, anthropology and osteology programs don’t really need more bones. So, if I specifically wanted my remains to go to something like that, I’d have to pay for it. Which is no longer donation in my mind, it’s just an unusual funeral. When my bones got to whatever university was willing to store them, they’ll sit in a box in a room and never do anything useful.

There would need to be something unusual about my remains for them to be useful in education at this point.

Medical research doesn’t need dead bodies often.

So what science is it going to?

The answer is none because the number of people voluntarily donating is already meeting demand for research.

But, hey, maybe it would be worth setting up a cadaver transportation and storage system anyway. Maybe future research would need them. But, it would need to be set up. Preservation has to be done locally, so tack it onto existing medical examiner’s offices. They apply whatever method is determined to be best to the bodies. Then they ship them to some kind of centralized storage. We can build those over existing cemeteries, so it’ll be decades before we run out of land to build them on.

Once there, staff would maintain the remains. Most likely frozen, since chemical preservation causes other hassles. So you’d have freezer cemeteries that can build upwards instead of outwards, which is definitely a good thing.

Then, they can stay there until someone needs a dead body, but doesn’t need it freshly dead. Even has the side benefit of still allowed kin to visit!

But, still, dead bodies aren’t very useful for “science”. Great for training new doctors though. So we’d always have enough on standby for that.

having an opt-out policy instead if an opt-in policy would allow those that care enough to opt out, but allow science and organ donation to become the cultural norm.

I definitely reached the view that I would donate my own body after reading Stiff, by Mary Roach many years ago. The funeral industry is nuts.

That said, it’s offputting to make it compulsory. There should be a focus on awareness.

Agreed. But also, cemeteries and casket burials should be banned. Complete waste of space and land. Cremate or better yet, let the animals and bugs eat my dead meat.

But I want to become a zombie and eat brains

All bodies should be automatically given to science and organ donation upon death.

Let me get that right. What you’re proposing is that every human is a burlap $ack full of $$$ if not ruined by cigarettes, alcohol, drugs, or cancer from micro plastics is to be given away for free with zero compensation to the grieving family and all $xx,xxx to $xxx,xxx profits for said sold organ going to some executive?

¡Fuuuuuuuuck that shit!

¿You think this kid’s knee or kidney is gonna pay for someone not in this blood line’s Ferrari?

¡You’re out of your god damn mind!

My next of kin get market value of that organ or my shit gets burnt to ash and pressed into vinyl records so I can continue going to raves even after I am dead.

everyone should be a donor by default,

if you opt out, you are also barred from getting organs if you need them. seems fair.

Unless they’re really cute than I want it.

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