Fady Moustarah

About the author: Fady Moustarah was a postgraduate student of general surgery at the McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, when he wrote this viewpoint for the 1997 Logie Medical Ethics Essay Contest.

Under the current system of organ donation in Canada and the United States, unless individuals expressly give their consent to donate organs, it is illegal for doctors to use their organs for transplant. In addition to costing thousands of lives each year, this policy is flawed because the majority of people support organ donation but simply fail to fill out organ donor cards. A system in which individuals were presumed to want to donate their organs after death—but could still choose not to by carrying a card...