Your Dec. 17 editorial “Wait-Listed to Death” fails to mention an alternative to paying organ donors. This alternative, common in Europe, eliminates costs while producing an appreciable increase in transplanted organs: Simply change the national default, so that people are in the organ donor pool by default, instead of out of it. Since most Americans support organ donation, why place the burden of opting in on the majority?<\/p>\n
An enlightened view would ask only the minority who does not wish to donate to opt out.<\/p>\n
Academic studies, including our research, show that changing the default produces a significant increase in life-saving transplantation operations. We do not object to Sen. Arlen Specter’s proposal for reimbursing donors for expenses. But a simple change, consistent with the beliefs of the majority of people, would also prevent unnecessary deaths and let those who would rather not donate easily state their preference.<\/p>\n
Eric J. Johnson
\nColumbia Business School
\nColumbia University
\nNew York<\/p>\n
Daniel G. Goldstein
\nLondon Business School
\nLondon<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
(*) There’s nothing inherently Canadian about this post, but Decision Science News is generally fond of Canada and its vintage posters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
‘TIS THE SEASON TO GIVE Eric Johnson and Dan Goldstein have voiced an opinion on defaults as they relate to organ donation in today’s Wall Street Journal. Your Dec. 17 editorial “Wait-Listed to Death” fails to mention an alternative to paying organ donors. This alternative, common in Europe, eliminates costs while producing an appreciable increase […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-research-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4LKj-9M","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decisionsciencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decisionsciencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decisionsciencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decisionsciencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decisionsciencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=606"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.decisionsciencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":611,"href":"https:\/\/www.decisionsciencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606\/revisions\/611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decisionsciencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decisionsciencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decisionsciencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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