GUARDIANS of Singapore's Muslim religious practice deserve appreciation for taking a practical stand on the issue of Muslim organ donation. A fatwa or religious ruling decided by elders of the Fatwa Committee this week decrees that Muslims need not now give express consent for specified organs to be removed upon death for transplant surgery. Consent is presumed given unless they have registered their objection by signing an opt-out form. Pending the requisite law changes by Parliament after a period of consultation with the community, Muslims will have a distinction with non-Muslims removed from the Human Organ Transplant Act (Hota). Dissent is not anticipated during the comment process as the Fatwa Committee has made clear that organ donation and transplants do not conflict with Islam's teachings or jurisprudence. These are not new determinations.
It is nevertheless a welcome, forward-looking move - although in some ways inevitable - that Singaporeans of other faiths will applaud. Some down-to-earth reasons given by the committee for the change in thinking should not devalue in any way the religious elders' courage in making the value change. At present, patients waiting for transplants are disadvantaged when organs become available - however acute their condition - if they had not themselves pledged to be donors. Muslims opting in to be organ donors under the present Hota regime have been declining so steadily in recent years that Muslim patients' rate of acceptance for grafts will remain low if the opt-in, opt-out distinction remained. Preferential treatment, which it is, is impossible to defend on medical grounds alone. The curious disjunction will be minimised, for Muslims more than for others, once the law is amended.
Community elders and Muis, the Muslim religious affairs council, should go all out to encourage their community to not opt out when Hota is amended. This must apply with equal force to non-Muslims. The rate of organ availability has been middling despite the Hota law having been around for 20 years. It has become a hoary reiteration that Singaporeans are either not aware of such a law, or are aware and do not want to be 'emptied out' after death. This is not strictly a religious issue but one of societal enlightenment and continuing public education. And certainly one of deep personal belief and choice, over which no judgment should be made that can remotely be considered fair. The Muslim community's progressive step should give the Health Ministry a filip in its efforts to plug the message that organ donation should be distanced from superstition and prejudice.
