Operation
The register is a record of consent for legal purposes. Authorized medical personnel may access the register to see what an individual chose, but the family is also consulted. The AODR has no part in the actual transplant process, nor does it maintain lists of prospective recipients.
The deceased's family is also told what the register says and they're asked if he or she had changed their mind, or if the family has sincerely held objections to donation. Potential donors are encouraged to discuss their decision with their family to ensure their wishes are known to them.
An individual may consent to the use of all organs and tissues, or just some (if someone has strong views about particular body parts for instance). The consent is entirely voluntary and may be changed or withdrawn at any time. The register is only for organ donation, it doesn't cover other uses for organs such as scientific research.
An individual must be 18 years or older to give their consent, but 16 and 17 year olds may record an intention to donate. When only an intention is recorded the family will be asked to give consent in the event of death.
Read more about this topic: Australian Organ Donor Register
Famous quotes containing the word operation:
“Human knowledge and human power meet in one; for where the cause is not known the effect cannot be produced. Nature to be commanded must be obeyed; and that which in contemplation is as the cause is in operation as the rule.”
—Francis Bacon (1560–1626)
“It requires a surgical operation to get a joke well into a Scotch understanding. The only idea of wit, or rather that inferior variety of the electric talent which prevails occasionally in the North, and which, under the name of “Wut,” is so infinitely distressing to people of good taste, is laughing immoderately at stated intervals.”
—Sydney Smith (1771–1845)
“An absolute can only be given in an intuition, while all the rest has to do with analysis. We call intuition here the sympathy by which one is transported into the interior of an object in order to coincide with what there is unique and consequently inexpressible in it. Analysis, on the contrary, is the operation which reduces the object to elements already known.”
—Henri Bergson (1859–1941)