I live in Austria where every person is an organ donor and you have to opt-out of it. Even children are donors if their parents don’t opt them out. As a result, more than 99% of Austrians are organ donors. It never occurred to me that it could be the other way around.
I think that’s great. It’s incredibly selfish to not be an organ donor. The whole, “They will let me die to give my organs to someone important” argument is ludicrous.
Really depends where you live and how your government treats you.
I don’t think it’s ludicrous on the face of it. That’s basically what happens when an uninsured person dies from something that would have taken $10k to fix and an insured person gets their organs.
Doctors only get in trouble for letting someone die when that person has a medical right to the care that would have saved them. Even then there is leeway because whether someone has a medical right to that care is often something that depends on a doctor’s estimation of the situation, which means other doctors would have to testify against them for them to get in trouble. Which of course they’ll only do if they are sympathetic to the victim or unsympathetic towards the doctor and they know it won’t affect their career prospects too poorly.
So I wouldn’t be surprised if in Austria, ethnically MENA organ donors tended to die more often than ethnically MENA non-organ donors and this gap would be bigger than with ethnically European donors/non-donors (if that gap exists). Not even as some kind of conspiracy or malice aforethought, but as just a little bit of laziness here and there. Hell, not even laziness, just setting your boundaries for once and going home after only 2 hours of overtime instead of 2 hours and 15 minutes while ordering an extra test for that one patient who probably doesn’t even need it.
There is still the question whether you want to deprive someone of your organs for that small statistical increase in risk, if you’re even the sort of demographic that risks being dehumanized. And if you’re worried about malpractice, it’s much better to buddy up with a friend and agree to supervise the doctors and nurses whenever either of you is in the hospital. Most malpractice and medical mistakes are the sort of thing a lay person can catch with some attentiveness and internet searches.