Some desperately ill children in Japan are dying because the smaller organs they require for transplant surgery are unavailable here. When their families can afford it, children needing such operations must travel to the United States or other countries where the use of organs from brain-dead donors under the age is 15 is permitted. Sometimes even that is too late because the children must wait for organs to become available, and other potential recipients were registered before them. Now, although the issue remains emotionally charged, moves are under way to promote changes in the three-year-old Organ Transplant Law to allow such donations from children aged 15 and younger here. The proposals deserve careful study and ultimately should win public understanding and support.

The question is not as clear-cut, however, as it can seem in petitions for changes in the law from desperate groups of parents and sympathizers. Public debate on the issue is certain to be heightened by the decision of a nonpartisan group of Diet members under former Foreign Minister Taro Nakayama to review the application of the present law so that transplant operations from brain-dead donors under 15 will be possible. The group will have to concentrate its greatest attention on the question of whether the intention of children below the age of 15 can be legally recognized. The Civil Code dictates 15 as the age limit for making a last will and testament.

Japan's Organ Transplant Law sets what are generally agreed to be the strictest conditions in the world for the removal of organs from brain-dead donors for transplant surgery. It is a misconception, however, that among these is an age limit for potential organ donors. When the Diet was deliberating the proposed legislation it decided to set the age limit at 15 in the application of the law, based on recommendations from the Health and Welfare Ministry. For certain cultural and in some cases religious reasons, many Japanese remain ambivalent or even opposed to transplant surgery. That is why the conditions set by the law require that potential donors have given previous written or other documentary consent and that family members give their approval for the operation.