Efforts Urged to Boost Organ Donations (AP)

WASHINGTON - More emphasis needs to be placed on showing people the importance of donating organs and making it easy for them to do so, the Institute of Medicine reported Tuesday.

But its report discouraged the offering of financial incentives to donate organs and said the country is not ready for policies that would assume consent to donate unless an individual had specifically chosen not to.

"All members of society have a stake in an adequate supply of organs for patients in need, because all of us are potential recipients as well as potential donors," said committee chairman James F. Childress, a professor of medical education at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville.

The report called on federal agencies, nonprofit groups and other organizations to improve organ donation systems, increase opportunities for people to make donations and to educate the public about the value of donating organs.

As of the start of 2006, about 90,000 people in the United States were awaiting organ donations, the report said. And while rates of donation have been increasing, 7,593 deceased donors provided 21,215 organs in 2005, and there were 6,896 living donors.

Most donations come from people whose death is determined by lack of brain activity, and the panel suggested seeking ways to increase the potential for donations from people who die of irreversible loss of heart function.

Currently people have to make a decision to donate organs, or it can be made by their next of kin. There have been suggestions that the law be changed to assume willingness to donate unless the individual has specifically opted out. However, the panel concluded that there is no widespread public support for such a change.

And it discouraged the idea of offering financial incentives to donate, saying that could cause people to view organs as commodities and discourage donations for altruistic reasons.

The Institute is an arm of the National Academies, the nation's most prestigious science organization. Its report was requested by the Department of Health and Human Services.

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Institute of Medicine: http://www.iom.edu