Dr Maeghan Toews1
1University Of Adelaide, Australia
Biography:
Bio to come
Abstract:
PURPOSE:
International consensus guidelines were published in 2023 providing a set of legal recommendations for organ and tissue donation and transplantation (OTDT) systems. This presentation will evaluate the uniformity and strength of existing Australian OTDT laws against these guidelines to identify areas ripe for policy and law reform.
NATURE/SCOPE:
Relevant state and Commonwealth legislation was evaluated against the full range of legal recommendations contained in the international consensus guidelines, encompassing issues such as the legal definition of death, consent for living and deceased donation, consent for pre-mortem optimising interventions, organ allocation, mandatory referral for deceased donation, donor and recipient privacy, and travel for transplant and organ trafficking.
THE PROBLEM UNDER CONSIDERATION:
As there are not enough donated organs to meet the needs of waitlisted patients, it is important to consider ethically sound legal and policy developments to optimise donation rates. This study provides an opportunity to measure Australian law against international best practices to identify areas of strength and strategies to improve our OTDT systems.
OUTCOME/CONCLUSION:
Areas of strength across Australian jurisdictions include protection for the “dead donor rule”, consent requirements for competent adult living donors, and prohibitions on organ commercialism. Areas for potential reform include clarifying consent requirements for premortem interventions and implementing mandatory referral for deceased donation. Despite attempts to unify legal approaches to OTDT across the country, there is considerable variation between Australian jurisdictions on the remaining issues examined.