As opportunities to save lives increase with new technologies and procedures, the demand for organ donors rises faster than the actual number of donors. In order to respect individual autonomy, voluntary consent must be determined for the individuals disposition of their remains following death. There are two main methods for determining voluntary consent: "opt in" (only those who have given explicit consent are donors) and "opt out" (anyone who has not refused consent to donate is a donor). In terms of an opt-out or presumed consent system, it is assumed that individuals do intend to donate their organs to medical use when they expire. Opt-out legislative systems dramatically increase effective rates of consent for donation as a consequence of the default effect. For example, Germany, which uses an opt-in system, has an organ donation consent rate of 12% among its population, while Austria, a country with a very similar culture and economic development, but which uses an opt-out system, has a consent rate of 99.98%.Opt-out consent, otherwise known as "deemed" consent, support refers to the notion that the majority of people support organ donation, but only a small percentage of the population are actually registered, because they fail to go through the actual step of registration, even if they want to donate their organs at the time of death.
Moving up the list is contingent on the individual opting-in prior to their need for an organ donation. The policy applies nonmedical criteria when allowing the individual who has previously registered as an organ donor, or family has previously donated an organ, priority over another possible recipient. It must be determined that both recipients have identical medical needs prior to moving a recipient up the list. While incentives like this in the opt-in system do help raise donation rates, they are not as successful in doing so as the opt-out, presumed consent default policies for donation. Argentina
On November 30, 2005, the Congress introduced an opt-out policy on organ donation, where all people over 18 years of age will be organ donors unless they or their family state otherwise. The law was promulgated on December 22, 2005, as "Law 26,066".On July 4, 2018, the Congress passed a law removing the family requirement, making the organ donor the only person that can block donation. It was promulgated on July 4, 2018, as Law Justina or "Law 27,447". Brazil
A campaign by Sport Club Recife has led to waiting lists for organs in north-east Brazil to drop almost to zero; while according to the Brazilian law the family has the ultimate authority, the issuance of the organ donation card and the ensuing discussions have however eased the process.