IT IS estimated that more than 1,000 patients die every year for want of an organ transplant.

Despite years of trying to persuade people they should sign up as donors, there remains a chronic shortage of transplant organs. Asking people to "opt in" to the system clearly has one big shortfall: not enough volunteers sign up.

This is why Prime Minister Gordon Brown is backing an alternative system of "presumed consent". Under this arrangement, people would automatically be considered as donors, unless they had earlier "opted out" by saying that they did not wish their organs to be used.

This apparently simple switch masks a deal of moral complications and difficulties. Some objections have already been raised, with one expert in human tissue studies warning of a return "to a dictatorship where those in authority will do as they please".

Such strong views deserve respect, and nothing in this matter is ever going to be easy or clear-cut. Except for one thing: there is at present a shortage of donor organs that prevents lives being saved. And a switch to an "opt in" system, as already exists in Spain, would release more organs for transplant - and release more patients from an unnecessary death sentence.

If such a system were introduced, the National Health Service would need to have sufficient funds to carry out the operations - money which could be made available from the savings on kidney dialysis, which is such an expensive procedure.

Full discussion is needed, too, on the moral aspects. Necessary safeguards would have to be introduced to ensure those still not happy about organ donation are not put under any unseemly pressure. For all such concerns, an arrangement of "presumed consent" looks like a positive way forward.