Moving to opt-out (the defualt is that you are an organ donor unless you say otherwise) works. This is done is Spain and Belgium and both countries eliminted their waiting list.

Another option is forced choice where you force the person to either opt-in or opt-out when they renew their driver's license. You don't have to be a donor but you also can't not decide.

A third idea is to give people who are organ donors priority in recieving organ transplants. Their priority would be based on what fraction of their adult life they have been a donor.

The opt-out approach conflicts severely with the American value system. I can't even remotely see that flying.

On the driver's license issue, it's my understanding that the donor card or sticker actually carries no legal weight. The word of your next of kin is the end-all, be-all.

This is the problem with the third idea too -- I don't directly get to control whether I "am" a donor or not. All I can do is convey to my wife my sincere wishes that she not hesitate a moment to break me up for spare parts. The decision will be hers. That's how I understand the law to be, anyway.

I think the solution to this problem is that we all need to talk to our families, making sure they know our intent to be a donor, and getting their consent to be donors as well.

How about this extension? Out prisons are overloaded. If you are in for a life sentence with no hope of parole, you could donate your organs now. Doing so, your next of kin would get a reasonable payment, say 25-50K and at the same time, free up prison space. Yeah, I know, it's a radical idea...

It seems obvious that the only way to change our horrible percentage of approval for organs is to not ask families at all, but instead to put into operation a universal donor inquiry system. If filling out whether or not you want to be a donor is done at the same time as your taxes, or getting a driver's license, and if your decision is FINAL, as it so often isn't in the case of a family's distressed dissent, than our country's 6000+ deaths a year from lack of organs will plummet.

See http://www.lifesharers.com/Voluntary system to put organ donors higher on the priority list.

Why not use another mode of organ donation? We can use biotechnology in aiding us in getting organs with the use of the stem cell research that scientist have been doing for the past years. With stem cell research the objectives that they aim to do is to fight or find solutions for diseases like parkinsons and aids. Another objective of stem cell is also cloning. I heard they have successfully made a transgenic animal,which they call chimeras, that is a sheep who has a liver of a human. But it is modified so it is not yet sure if we can use it for human use.