世論 What Japan Thinks

A big story over the summer was the change in the Organ Donation Law to allow family members to offer up their brain-dead relatives for harvesting even without prior agreement from the donor. To see how Japanese felt about this change, iShare took a look at expressing opinions on organ donation.

Demographics

Between the 6th and 12th of October 2010 431 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 56.6% of the sample were male, 32.9% in their twenties, 29.5% in their thirties, and 37.6% in their forties.

The news has been welcome in my household too as it’s given us an opportunity to talk about our wishes; all my bits are up for grabs, although my wife draws the line at her heart.

When the positive respondents to Q1 were asked why they had filled out their views, top reasons were that they wanted to be useful to someone after death and that they didn’t want their family members to waver over a decision. For those who hadn’t filled out a card yet, those that wanted to do expressed similar reasons to those above. Conversely, those against filling out a card wanted to leave the decision to the surviving family, or they weren’t yet sure what they wanted to do. However, others felt there was still the possibility of recovery from brain death, and if they filled out the card they could get criticised for it.

Research results

Q1: On the 17th of July 2010 a revision to the Organ Donation Law was enacted, such that regardless of a person’s expressed position, if the family agreed, on brain death even in the under 15s, organ donation could be performed. Did you know about this change to the law? (Sample size=431)

	All	Male N=244	Female N=187
Yes	80.3%	76.6%	85.0%
No	19.7%	23.4%	15.0%

Q2: Have you filled in an organ doner card or seal, or indicated on your driving licence or insurance card, or registered on the internet your wishes for whether or not your organs are to be donated? (Sample size=431)

	All	Male N=244	Female N=187
Yes (to SQ1)	18.3%	19.3%	17.1%
No (to SQ2)	81.7%	80.7%	82.9%

Q2SQ1: When did you fill out your organ donor card, etc? (Sample size=79)

	All	Male N=47	Female N=32
Before 17th of July 2010	84.8%	78.7%	93.8%
After 17th of July 2010	15.2%	21.3%	6.3%

Q2SQ2: Would you like to fill out an organ donor card, etc in the future? (Sample size=352)

	All	Male N=197	Female N=155
Want to	37.8%	36.0%	40.0%
Don’t want to	62.2%	64.0%	60.0%

Q3: If a family member were to end up brain dead but had not filled out an organ donor card, would you agree to donating their organs to a suitable patient? (Sample size=431)

	All	Male N=244	Female N=187
Definitely	3.5%	5.3%	1.1%
Perhaps	40.6%	43.9%	36.4%
Perhaps not	42.7%	39.3%	47.1%
Definitely not	13.2%	11.5%	15.5%

Over two-thirds of those who have already filled out an organ donation form would donate, but just under two-fifths of those who hadn’t would.