2005 National Survey of Organ and Tissue Donation Attitudes and Behaviors

3.4 Attitudes Toward Presumed Consent

Some countries have enacted presumed consent laws that assume a person wishes to donate unless he or she opts out by expressing the wish not to donate. It is of interest to determine whether there is widespread support for this concept in the United States.

Some countries presume that people wish to donate their organs at death. This is called presumed consent. Their organs may be used for transplanting unless they have signed a document indicating that they don't wish to donate their organs. Would you strongly support, support, oppose, or strongly oppose using this presumed consent approach in the United States?

Do you think a system of presumed consent would increase or decrease the number of available organs for transplants?

If a system of presumed consent were adopted in the United States, would you sign up as a non-donor?

Figure 11 reports results for attitudes toward presumed consent. In all, support is not strong for changing to a presumed consent system in the United States. Together, those who "strongly support" presumed consent (15.1%) and those who "support" it (28.1%) comprise less than half the population. Most people either "oppose" (26.7%) or "strongly oppose" (30.1%) presumed consent. The lack of widespread support is not for want of perceived effectiveness. Fully 85.9% of respondents believe that a system of presumed consent would increase the number of available organs for transplant. Finally, about 3 in 10 report that they would opt-out of a presumed consent approach.

Figure 11. Attitudes Toward Presumed Consent

In Table 6, men (18.6%) are somewhat more likely than women (12.5%) to "strongly support" presumed consent. Those aged 18 to 34 (17.3%) are more likely than those aged 35 to 54 (14.5%) or those aged 55 or older (14.4%) to "strongly support" presumed consent. Blacks (20.3%) are more likely to "strongly support" presumed consent than are Latinos (15.1%), Whites (13.9%), or Asians (8.8%). Education shows no appreciable differences.

Belief that presumed consent would increase organ availability is slightly higher among men (87.1%) than among women (85.0%), while those aged 35 to 54 (87.6%) are more likely to believe this than those in other age groups. Blacks (76.0%) and Latinos (78.6%) are less likely than Whites (90.3%) to believe that presumed consent would increase the availability of organs for transplant. Moreover, belief that presumed consent would increase the availability of organs increases with the level of education from 74.6% among those with high school educations or less to 90.4% among those with college educations.

Table 6. Presumed Consent by Gender, Age, Race/Ethnicity, and Education

If a system of presumed consent were to be adopted in the United States, about 3 in 10 (31.3%) say they would sign up as a non-donor. Women (33.1%) are more likely to say they would sign up as a non-donor than are men (28.9%). Those aged 35 to 54 (28.1%) are less likely to say they would sign up as a non-donor than either those aged 18 to 34 (30.1%) or those aged 55 or older (36.2%).

Whites (26.2%) are considerably less likely to say they would sign up as a non-donor than are Blacks (43.8%), Latinos (43.3%), or Asians (37.5%). Persons with high school educations or less (48.9%) are considerably more likely than those with some college (27.1%) or college educations or more (23.7%) to say they would sign up as non-donors.

Some of the items used in the survey questionnaire for this study are proprietary content owned by The Gallup Organization. A complete list is found on the Copyright page. Copyright © 1993, 2005 The Gallup Organization, Washington, D.C. All rights reserved.