Ky. Senate panel OKs bill to spur organ donations

State News

March 11, 2010

Bruce Schreiner Associated Press Thu Mar 11, 2010, 08:22 AM EST

FRANKFORT — A Kentucky advocate for organ donations predicted that a bill advanced by a Senate panel Wednesday will spur more donations leading to lifesaving transplants.

The bill updates procedures for Kentuckians to make, alter or revoke wishes to make anatomical gifts. They could also expressly state they don’t wish to be donors.

The proposal, sponsored by Senate President David Williams, was approved by the Health and Welfare Committee during a review that had two Senate Republican leaders on opposite sides.

Paul E. O’Flynn, executive director of Kentucky Organ Donor Affiliates, said about 700 people in Kentucky are on waiting lists for organ transplants. He predicted the bill, if enacted, would increase the number of people on the organ donor registry.

“That will, in the long run, increase the number of organ donors that we have in the state,” O’Flynn told reporters afterward.

The proposal would make Kentucky’s organ donor law consistent with laws in about 40 other states, O’Flynn said. It specifies that if someone makes a decision about donating organs, it’s the family’s responsibility to follow through that the wishes are carried out, he said.

The bill also would give the Kentucky organ registry the same legal weight as a living will or the back of a signed driver’s license, O’Flynn said.

In Kentucky, people getting or renewing a driver’s license are asked if they would like to be an organ donor. Names of people committing to organ donations are added to a data base.

The bill was opposed by Sen. Katie Stine, the Senate President Pro Tem.

Stine, R-Southgate, said the measure would move the donation process away from requiring the express consent of a donor or next of kin to a system of assumed consent.

She said the bill defines a donor as anyone who has not refused to be a donor.

She said it “infringes on private property rights that go to the most intimate and personal choices that a person can make.”

“It is a noble and great gift for someone to expressly give their organs,” she said. “But this bill moves us away from gifting and toward taking.”

Williams stressed that the bill includes no assumption of consent from a donor.

He said the bill would be helpful in a “very trying time in people’s lives, when they’re trying to make decisions that will make something slightly positive” in tragic circumstances.

Absent a person’s instructions, a list of close relatives can make the decision about organ donations under current law. But the bill clarifies that relatives could not override a refusal to donate or expand someone’s limited organ gift, supporters said.

O’Flynn said the bill would add grandchildren and grandparents to the list of relatives who could give consent to organ donations by a loved one.

He said organ donations would remain a “family-centered decision” under the bill.

Williams said afterward he was optimistic the bill would become law. He told reporters that his disagreement with Stine over the bill wouldn’t create a rift in Senate GOP leadership.

“We don’t agree on everything,” he said.

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