Moving to an opt-out system of organ donation in Scotland would "not necessarily" lead to more transplant operations taking place, the public health minister has said.
Michael Matheson insisted the Scottish Government was "unconvinced" about making such a change.
He spoke out as Holyrood debated a petition backed by more than 20,000 people calling on ministers to introduce an opt-out system for organ donation.
Wales is introducing a new system of deemed consent, where organs can be taken for transplant unless people have made it clear they do not wish this to happen after their death.
Mr Matheson told MSPs the Scottish Government would monitor the situation in Wales to see what impact the change had. But he stated: "It would be fair to say we remain unconvinced we should make any move to introduce an opt-out system right now. People believe opt-out will mean more organs will become available but our own experts tell us this is not necessarily the case.
"Opt-out means increasing the proportion of the population on the organ donor register but you don't need to be on the organ donor register to be a donor.
"The real issue that limits the number of donors is the number of people who die in circumstances where donation is possible."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article