Experts predict that an extra 300 vital transplants per year could be carried out if people were asked to ‘opt out’ of donating rather than the current ‘opt in’ system. The existing system requires people to register their wishes for donation on the Organ Donor Register but it is fundamentally flawed as people are often willing donors but do not get round to joining the register.

By presuming consent by default, it would ensure that those who did not want to donate made an active decision to do so and everybody else was eligible for donation. It would then mean that the NHS would be able to transplant organs from the vast majority of the UK.

The public opinion is startlingly divided in the UK, with many people claiming that organ donation should be altruistic. However, the system is currently very successful in several EU countries. Currently in the UK, over 400 people each year die while on the organ waiting list, something that the NHS believes can only be helped by significantly increased donations.

According to Sheila Bird from the Medical research Council Biostatistics Unit in Cambridge, if a ‘presumed consent’ system had been in place for the last 10 years and 10% of people had opted out and another 10% of families’ overruled donation, 2,880 extra organs would have still been available.

Writing in the British Medical Journal, Professor Bird said “Twenty years after the UK’s first confidential audit, we continue to jeopardise substantial quality adjusted life years (uncounted by the Organ Donor Taskforce) for those awaiting transplantation by chasing a holy grail of enhanced consent by means other than presumption.”

Presuming consent would essentially cut costs, prolong life as well as saving bereaved families from anxious deliberation in deciding what happens to their loved ones organs according to Professor Bird.

The increase in transplant recipients would increase the survival rate of many diseases and call for more private nursing jobs, primarily nursing jobs York.