In the summer of 1997, I visited the United States as a member of a team of Yomiuri Shimbun reporters covering the issue of transplanting organs from brain-dead people.

In June that year, the Diet had passed the Organ Transplant Law, which enabled doctors to transplant organs donated by patients who had suffered brain death.

The objective of my trip to the United States before the law took effect in October was to see the state of affairs on transplanting body parts in a nation lauded as one of the world's most advanced in organ implants.

My assignment covered a group called the United Network for Organ Sharing and a Japanese surgeon performing organ transplants at the University of Pittsburgh. But my most striking memory was of Tamio Kihara, then 23, from Fukuoka, who was hospitalized at Stanford University and waiting for a liver transplant.

"Has it already been nine years? Time really flies," Kihara's mother, Hiroko, 69, said to me on the telephone recently. Suffering from chronic liver failure, Tamio had been told his days were numbered. There was no way for him to receive an organ transplant in Japan so his family flew to the United States, using donations collected through fund-raising.

Kihara was in serious condition in an intensive care unit when I visited him. With tears in his eyes, his father, Tatsufumi, comforted him. It was obvious, even to a layman like me, that he was near death. I did not know what to say to them.

Then, out of the blue, a liver donor was found and Tamio received a transplant. He was back on his feet two days after the operation, walking in the hospital corridor for exercise. I was stunned to see his dramatic recovery.

I also was immensely touched by his parents' comments. "We hope we are the last ones to go through such an ordeal," they told me.

A bill to revise the Organ Transplant Law was submitted recently to the Diet. But the legislation has not been given high priority and it is unclear whether deliberations on the bill will even start before the current Diet session ends.

The key point of the debate, once it starts, is essentially whether organs can be donated with just the consent of family members. Politicians are divided over the matter and two versions of proposals to add changes to the bills also are muddying the waters. One proposal calls for requiring the consent of the patient himself to be an organ donor while easing age and other qualifications needed to be a donor.

Some observers have called for debates over the revisions not to be done hastily. I also am aware that others espouse improving medical treatment to prevent people from becoming brain dead in the first place, rather than using them for organ transplants after the fact.

But I do not feel comfortable with the notion of stalling on debates over the transplant issue.

First of all, no law will please every single person. According to the rules of our society, Diet members--representatives of the people--are tasked with deciding how Japan should deal with organ transplants from brain-dead patients.

Hiroko Kihara said the days waiting for a donor to replace her son's ailing liver were "hellish." On the other hand, less fortunate families are lamenting the deaths of loved ones, unable to receive lifesaving treatment, who became brain dead before passing away.

Politicians must listen to such stories and take them into account before coming up with a comprehensive decision.

In the Diet, the ruling coalition has freed its members from their obligation to vote along party policy lines when it comes to revising the Organ Transplant Law, saying that bills dealing with matters of life and death should be left to each Diet member's conscience.

The notion that the coalition can ram the bill through the Diet using its overwhelming majority is not true in the case of this legislation.

Some lawmakers admit they do not know the finer details of the transplant law because they have not thoroughly studied it. Such excuses are open invitations to tag Diet members as lazy: As elected lawmakers, they are obligated to properly study such matters, no matter how busy they are.

About 40 organ transplants have been conducted in Japan since the law went into force in 1997. During the same period, a number of people have died while waiting for a donor or have gone abroad to have transplants. The reality remains that Japanese patients often have to go to the United States to receive organ transplants, just as they did nine years ago.

Prospects for amending the transplant law are unclear. The Diet might decide that suddenly expanding the scope of transplants from brain-dead patients cannot be done in one step. Such a decision might anger some people and cause others despair. But once the Diet reaches that decision, we have no choice but to accept it.

But I could not bear Japan becoming a country of indifference, a country of people who refuse to even think about organ transplants from brain-dead people, a country of people hesitant to express whether they want to offer their organs should they become brain dead, or a country that fails to squarely face up to reality.

As I see the Diet is barely interested in even taking up this important legislation, I feel drained of energy. It makes me wonder just when Japan became a nation full of cowards.

Sato is a deputy science news editor of The Yomiuri Shimbun.