Government plans to issue national organ donor cards Effort aims to boost donations by adding legal weight to last wishes

Laura Meckler - Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- The government will begin issuing national organ donor cards as part of an aggressive effort to increase the number of donations, officials said last week.

The idea is to give transplant coordinators a stronger case for proceeding with donation, regardless of a family's OK, by making the donor cards legal documents that carry more weight than a driver's license or unofficial donor card.

It's one element of a sweeping plan that Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson plans to unveil later this month. Since taking office, Thompson has talked regularly about organ donation, prodding his audiences to sign donor cards.

“It's odd to me that in America, this most compassionate country in the world, we have so many people that are dying because of lack of organs,'' he told reporters.

More than 75,600 patients are waiting for organs, and more than 6,000 of them die each year.

The Thompson initiative is likely to involve several elements, including a media campaign and efforts to work closely with businesses and states to promote donation. It also will include an effort to encourage and support increasingly popular living organ donations.

And President Bush's budget includes an additional $5 million for organ donation and transplant activities, an increase of 33 percent.

The national donor card would represent a more structural change, aimed at helping the transplant coordinators who talk with families about donation.

Currently, when faced with a potential organ donor, most transplant coordinators will tell family members if their loved one had signed a donor card but leave it up to them whether to abide by the deceased's wishes.

The new cards would allow coordinators to go a bit further, the official explained, by presuming that someone who has a signed card will become a donor unless they are told otherwise.

The cards would include a place for witnesses to sign and for donors to specify which organs they wish to donate and whether they want to include tissue and eyes.

The idea is to give the documents more legal weight and to prompt families to discuss the issue in a manner worthy of a legal document, officials said.

Anything that prompts discussion is likely to be helpful, said Susan Gunderson, president of the Association of Organ Procurement Organizations and director of a Minnesota organ bank.

Most families that know their loved one's wishes are likely to honor them, she added, but the stronger donor card could break the tie in families that disagree about whether to donate.

Federal officials say the cards would supplement, not replace, the donor cards that now exist, and could become a model for states or others that wish to adopt them.

-- Anonymous, April 15, 2001