Presumed consent for donating organs is rightly rejected (for now, at least)
Dear Sir Liam Donaldson,
As Chief Medical Officer I would hope that your first priority is to guarantee the safety and well-being of patients. I appreciate that thanks to our socialist overlords, there is a bit of a craze going round at the moment where you use the economic crisis to take control of as many things as possible. No doubt Gordon Brown had a wry smile on his face when he secured control of a large chunk of our banking system, but I’m afraid that the same logic does not apply to my internal organs. Unfortunately for you, these wonderful organs belong to me and you have no right to go anywhere near them – even when I’m dead.
Earlier this year, you advocated the introduction of ‘presumed consent’ into organ donations, in which everyone would have to opt-out of donating organs rather than opt-in by carrying an organ donation card. The bureaucracy that this would create seemed to be an insurmountable hurdle, seeing as the government can’t keep anyone’s personal details safe for more than a few minutes. Trying to keep track of 60 million people’s decisions about organ donations was always going to be an impossible task for such an incompetent government. That said, the bureaucracy paled into insignificance when compared with the implicit and sickening suggestion that the state owns my body unless I sign a piece of paper saying that they don’t. Being a rampant socialist, Gordon Brown was evidently salivating at the prospect of controlling our bodies as well as controlling our finances and threw his considerable weight behind your proposal for an opt-out system – which apparently they use in Spain and therefore would work perfectly in this country.
Unknown to me at the time, your proposals went even further than that. You wanted to set up a donation agency within the NHS that would manage 250 “transplant co-ordinators” who would be sent in to talk to relatives soon after someone died, explain the clinical guidelines and address their fears (i.e. try to convince them that hacking out their loved one’s internal organs would be fine and dandy). Once the relatives had agreed that the patient’s organs could be taken, the co-ordinator would oversee all the arrangements and the specialist ‘retrieval teams’ would be sent in to ’harvest’ organs. You insisted that families would retain an opt-out at all stages, but clearly you failed to understand that setting up these teams with the explicit intention of increasing the number of organs being donated would always prevent them from being impartial.
Back to today. Gordon Brown feels that “limits imposed by our current system of consent” by having what’s known as a ‘free society’ need to be bypassed (no pun intended) and you seem to agree with him. Thankfully, the review by the Organ Donation Taskforce will conclude that your plans for presumed consent are not warranted. I share your concern that having over 8,000 people on the transplant waiting list when only 3,000 operations are carried out each year is not good enough, and for 1,000 to die each year waiting for a transplant is tragic. Let me provide three possible options to consider:
- Create a fully-regulated market for selling organs. At the moment poor people are forced by their impoverished circumstances to sell their organs on the international black market in dangerous and unsupervised environments. Why not create a proper market for these transactions to keep everyone safe? Why shouldn’t people get paid for donating their organs?
- Give out donation cards (along with information on organ donations, obviously) at train stations in the morning and evening - just get the cards out there! I’m convinced that thousands more people are willing to donate their organs but they haven’t got the time or energy to seek out a donation card (I don’t know where I could get a card, even if I wanted it)
- Stop families having the legal right to withhold their relative’s organs if they carry an organ donation card. The state having control of my body is unacceptable and so is my family. Difficult as it may be for them, if I carry a donation card than neither my family nor anyone else should have the right to stop my organs from being passed on. At present, around one-third of families refuse to give consent for organ retrieval, and even when a patient carries a donor card, many families still refuse – this is wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong.
So there you have it – three ways (my preference being the latter) to improve organ donation rates without having the state assume control of my body. You and Gordon Brown have no right to hand out my internal organs unless I give you my permission loud and clear through my own actions, not because I’m too lazy to withdraw my consent.
Yours sincerely,
A.Tory
Witanagemot Blogs
I agree with you on almost every level. This plan will secretely play on people’s general apathy to filling out more forms – especially as the issue might not seems so pressing! So I agree we should keep the same system and stop family members from changing what is clearly the wish of the deceased – as they ‘opted in’. With the ‘opt out’ system they would have more rights in terms of stopping the harvesters from snatching organs!
I would also support being paid for organs – as at the moment I wouldn’t donate my organs as it seems a bit weird – but I’m sure I cold overcome that fear with a £20,000 cheque! This could also be related to your health status – so you get more for a healthy organ.
Another ‘you belong to the State’ attitude. Not very edifying to see the mask slip so often, these days, is it?
‘Presumed consent’, or the Nationalisation of Bodies, is the thin end of the wedge. Think about the implications if this had been passed.
Smoking or drinking would no longer be a matter for you and your health as you would be damaging state property. Same with drugs, risky sex or anything else of that ilk. Thus would manifest a pretty totalitarian excuse for social control in the name of health; not just your health but the health of whoever will receive your organs upon your death.
At least this scheme is halted for now; personally I’ll be okay as I have an autoimmune disease so can’t even give blood, let alone an organ. Lucky old me…
Shaun, I don’t think smoking is a good comparison to the principle of organ donation due to the externalities such as passive smoking. I was totally against the government trying to introduce smoking licenses because they have no right to legislate against certain behaviour, but public health is different (although I accept that the evidence for passive smoking might not be perfect).
That said, I take your point about the totalitarian implications of all this, seeing as the state owning our bodies could lead to a raft of new measures being introduced on the grounds that we have to look after people who receive our organs as well!
I think I’ve been unclear; its not that smoking is comprable to the principle of organ donation, its that this will be another ‘reason’ to legislate against smoking, even on your own in the privacy of your own home since regardless of passive smoking, you’d be harming ‘your’ heart, lungs and vascular system, all of which would ‘belong’ to the state…
Gotcha, and a good point too.
The law of unintended consequences is a wonderful thing. You see, at the moment I carry a donor card and have told my family that should I die suddenly, I want anything of me that is left to be used to help someone else out so that at least some good can come out of the tragedy* of my death.
I had already decided that, being the contrary little so-and-so that I am, if presumed consent was introduced then I would register my objection. As you say, the suggestion that is implicit in this policy is nothing short of sickening. Therefore, I reasoned, I would want nothing to do with such a system and would have to opt out.
Last point; if a business did this, it would be classed as inertia marketing and Trading Standards would want to have a word with the management.
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*feel free to disagree with this choice of word
Indeed. A lot of willing donors might be so repulsed by this initiative that they would pull out as well, seeing as the kindness inherent in their volunteering to donate organs has been completely wiped out.
And your death (and subsequent loss from this blog) would be tragic indeed.
“Create a fully-regulated market for selling organs”
That would probably be the most effective method but I think the “ew” factor makes it hard to convince the public of.
On safety grounds, I’d urge people to opt out as you never really want to be in the position of being seriously ill in hospital with your life in the hands of doctors who could go the extra mile and try and save you or they could let you die and give your organs to that sweet little kid down the corridor. This move encourages doctors to view critically ill patients as a resource to use and not a patient to treat.
Ross, I wasn’t envisaging something like Albert Square on Eastenders with the kidneys and livers next to the grapefruit, if that helps.
Shaun, I think the whole concept of an opt-out is dehumanising and doctors may well be caught up in this.