Boosting donation rate may prove simple

If things are going along OK, most of us are content to let them keep going that way

There’s a coffee pot in the broom closet room across from my office. Check that, there is a sign on it that very clearly says “Tea only.”

I don’t drink either, so I’m no risk to foul someone’s tea pot with a healthy dose of java germs.

But like just about every modern appliance, from stoves to cellphones, that pot comes with a clock. And every time I go into the room I see the same thing on the clock: 12:00 flashing in that green light someone, somewhere decided was the best colour for digital readouts.

It’s never noon when I go in there to wash out a dish. But the clock is always flashing that time, a sort of mournful reminder it’s ignored by the humans who fill it with hot water (and tea) each day.

“Please,” it’s flashing to me in Morse code. “Please. You know the time isn’t right. Fix me. Please.”

So, I do. I push the little button that says ‘time’ and sync it to my watch. The next day, it’s flashing 12:00 again.

Why does this keep happening? Daniel Ariely knows. In fact, the Israeli professor is convinced he knows your mind better than you do. He’s probably right. And, he says, he can explain the flashing 12:00 tea pot – and organ donation.

The latter is a topic occupying local minds now that Nova Scotia has changed the rules on how people choose to decide if they’ll be come donors or not. More on that in a moment.

Ariely points to a 2003 study on the number of people willing to donate their organs, and how that figure varies widely from one country to another.

If you were living in Austria when the study was done, you were likely – well, very, very likely – to be among those willing to give consent to organ donation. After all, the consent level was 99.8 per cent.

Hungary was next in line at 99.97 and France was right on its heels at 99.91.

But if you were living right next door – everybody lives right next door to everyone else in Europe, it’s a small place – say in Germany, the United Kingdom or Belgium, bad luck for you.

The UK’s consent rate was at 17.17, Germany’s was 12, and Belgium barely registered at 4.25.

What the heck is going on? Nova Scotia knows. And P.E.I. is keeping a close eye on what’s happening there.

Nova Scotia’s law on organ donation changed Jan. 18. It used to be anyone who wanted to donate organs had to opt into the donation program there through something called the Nova Scotia Health Card Registry.

Now, humans are a lazy lot. If things are going along OK, most of us are content to let them keep going that way.

That’s why the tea pot keeps flashing 12:00. The pot works – I guess, I smell tea when I’m in there – whatever time the clock shows. The pots works, why bother about the clock?

Incredibly, organ donation seems to work the same way. If you have to go to ‘all’ the trouble of finding some registry and filling out a form to say yeah, OK, you can have my kidneys if they’re any good when I’m gone…forget it. Can’t be bothered.

By default, you’re not a donor. But now, in Nova Scotia, the law assumes you want to be a donor unless you go to the trouble of saying otherwise. You are opted in, unless you take the time to opt out.

That simple change is a key difference between the European countries with stellar consent rates – Austria and the rest, and the bottom feeders.

Encouraging donation also requires money. Nova Scotia has dropped about $3 million into things like education and support for families.

If this works in Nova Scotia, one day it might become the law here. Good idea.

Now, I have to run. That clock is calling.