( ing donors in Japan where life and dea...)The Long Wait ... Dying for Lack of Kidneys,Health

ing donors in Japan, where life and death are not based on brain death -- the end of mental activity -- but on cardiac arrest, because body parts are seen as part of the personality or soul. One answer to organ drought would be to get people to opt out of donorship rather than to opt in - or register as a donor.

Under this system, body parts required for transplant would automatically be lifted from all deceased bar those "opting out" of the system -- or specifically refusing to donate. Austria, Argentina, Belgium and Spain have such systems. In a bid to increase supply, the European Commission last month called for an EU-wide donor card. While 81 percent of European citizens support the use of organ donor cards, only 12 percent have one.

"Thousands of lives are saved every year in Europe by organ transplants. Yet many more lives could be saved if we could reduce the current shortage of organs," said EU Health Comissioner Markos Kyprianou. Almost universal consensus has it that human organs not be for sale (though operations do come at a cost not all can afford). But failing a massive increase in supply, trafficking is bound to continue, with the poor selling parts of themselves to the rich.

Medical journal The Lancet says 66,000 kidneys were transplanted in 98 countries in 2005, or only 10 percent of the estimated need. Transplant tourism, the term often used for organ trafficking, accounts for around one out of 10 transplants, it said last week. China, which denies charges of harvesting organs from executed prisoners or allowing clinics to collect from road accident victims, last month introduced its first regulations banning trade in organs. But wannabe transplants may simply go elsewhere, such as Pakistan, where The Lancet quoted reports stating that in some poor villages, almost no one has two kidneys.

"As long as the demand for organs outstrips supply, punitive measures will be ineffective: organ traffick
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