ABSTRACT
This chapter examines several aspects of laws regulating access to and use of human organs and tissue. It identifies patterns of the European legislation relating to organ procurement and also examines briefly details of the Swedish law. The chapter discusses the actual patterns of organ donation in a number of countries and the concept of donation. Typically, countries with presumed consent legislation have a history of a high level of state intervention and/or authoritarian rule. Among the countries with the highest rates of donation, Austria has exclusive presumed consent whereas Belgium and Spain have family inclusion. The United States and most European countries have specific transplant laws dealing with living donation. As in several other technically advanced countries, transplantation surgery developed rapidly in Sweden after the Second World War. The potential donor pool has been estimated as possibly 50 donors per million population/year, but the actual rates of necrodonation for many countries are significantly lower.
