The House of Representatives approved proposal A

"A person with died brain is considered dead."

Oita Godo Newspaper (evening edition on June 18, 2009)

At the grand conference of the House of Representatives in the afternoon of July 18, 4 organ transplantation proposals were introduced as the new legislation by Diet members.

Among four proposals, proposal A stating that "Died brain is generally considered to the death of the person" was the one which obtained the most supportive votes, thus has been approved by the House of Representatives. As furthermore information, if the person does not declare the disagreement of transplantation before the death of his/her brain, relatives have right to decide whether to allow the transplantation of the patient's internal organs or not.

Since the proposal A has been approved and sent to all hospitals, the other three proposals were failed. The old legislation required the lowest age of organ donor as 15 years old but the new one requires no limitation of donor's age.

All these are from the intention to increase the number of internal organ donors domestically.

Comment:  This is very hard to decide. There are always pros and cons in every proposal. In this case of proposal A, I think the most important advantage is that more people can be helped in time by getting fully-working-organ transplantation from donors (people with died brain but the body is still normally working). However, one thing I wonder is that when they will decide to operate the organs out of donors' bodies. How long should the doctors wait? Could it be possible if the donors' brains become awake some time we do not know in the future?

PUNTHUCHAT Siripun

Thailand

APS4, Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University