Gordon Brown Donor System Overhaul

Firstly an apology to all the photographers that read my weblog, I don’t often get involved in a political rant, but this is one of those times I feel obliged to do so. If you’re not interested please tune out now.

The crux of this rant is an announcement by Gordon Brown (UK PM) that he wants to overhaul the UK Organ Donor System, to one that is of “presumed consent” as opposed to the currently used opt-in system. But firstly I’d like to clarify a couple points about this weblog entry. Firstly it has little to do with organ donation and much more to do with the government poking its nose in where its not warranted, this is a basic human rights issue. I beleive that organ donation is a fine thing and saves many, many lives every single year, it’s one of the greatest medical marvels of our time, and I hope that everyone that needs a donor organ this year has a chance of getting one. My problem is that this is not the way to do it; Here’s why.

The government by mandating presumed consent unless the patient has opted-out of the scheme raises the following serious concerns.

• Firstly and perhaps most importantly, it assumes that the government has a right to your body, and what happens to it, perhaps even more so than your surviving relatives. At least with a donor card it was clear that your wishes were being carried out, but with presumed consent, we can only guarantee that the governments wishes are being carried out
• The opt-out system, whatever it may be has the potential for scenario’s like this “Oops, we couldn’t find his/her opt-out card at the time, so we implemented the presumed consent. Oops, the computers were down at the time so we weren’t able to access the records in time, and the organs only had a small harvest window, etc, etc.
• The doctor/nurse moral aspect. If you are in a critical condition, with let’s say a head injury and perfectly functioning organs, at what point does the medical staff’s moral value for the greater good outweigh their prognosis for your potential survivability. I know we’d all like to think that all doctors and nurses have an unwaivering moral code, and ethical standards way above most other people, but in the end, they’re just people like you and me, are you prepared to bet your life on each individuals moral and ethical code?
• Following from the previous point how about the reverse situation, someone being kept alive in a potentially vegetative or painful state, in order to give the hospital time to find potential tissue matches before harvesting the organs, again, this is down to one or more individuals moral and ethical code.

These are just a few of the points that I can think of in the short term of writing this post. Again, I think organ donation is a great thing, but once the government mandate ownership of my body during death or near-death, where does it end, this is the nanny state gone mad, and I for one do not support the proposed measures, however I doubt very much whether I’ll be given an option to do anything about it. I’ll write to my MP about this and see if that does any good! This is very much a knee-jerk post on my part, and maybe they’ll suggest something far more workable than I’m envisaging above, but there is still the fatal flaw that it’s easy to overlook an opt-out agreement if it suits the circumstances.