Sunday - January 13, 2008

Have a heart, mate

Seeking to help thousands waiting life-saving transplants, British PM Gordon Brown has signalled his support for acquiring organs from the dead without prior explicit consent, according to a Sky News report.

The policy, referred to as “presumed consent” would mean that, unless people opted out of the donor register or family members objected, hospitals would be allowed to take their organs.

In Britain we have 14.9 million people on the organ donor register - which is around 24 per cent of the population. In terms of actual donors (not just people willing to give, but those whose organs are actually used) we have a rate of about 13 donors per million in our population. This compares with about 22 per million in France, 25 per million in America and around 35 per million in Spain - the best in the world.

That is why I want to start a debate in this country about whether we should take steps to move towards a new system designed to enable far more of us to benefit from transplant surgery - one that better reflects survey findings that around 90 per cent of us are in favour of organ donation.

...
But a system of this kind seems to have the potential to close the aching gap between the potential benefits of transplant surgery and the limits imposed by our current system of consent. A serious debate - involving the public most of all, but also bringing in professional views and those of religious leaders - is long overdue. To facilitate it, Alan Johnson and I have asked the Organ Donation Taskforce to begin consulting on the question of a move to a different consent system.

It is a sensitive issue, and one on which many different points of view need to be heard. I want to start a genuine debate, and I recognise that there will be legitimate concerns that need to be heard. Any system that moved towards a new kind of consent needs careful safeguards, and we should not move in advance of a real and thoughtful public debate involving faith communities, patients and families.

“Oy, well ‘e didn’t say we couldn’t ‘ave ‘em gov’na. Course he was a might bit dead at the time.

The Government will launch an overhaul of the system next week, which will put pressure on doctors and nurses to identify more “potential organ donors” from dying patients. Hospitals will be rated for the number of deceased patients they “convert” into donors and doctors will be expected to identify potential donors earlier and alert donor co-ordinators as patients approach death.

‘ere, he looks dead to me! Got the snips? I’m not dead. Yes you are. I am NOT. Are so. Am not!

No, this really isn’t something out of Monty Python. This is real. Of course Mr. Brown says he wants to get a debate started. Well, causing an uproar like this sure will do the job!
I expect it to pass. I expect it to become law: that unless you tell them specifically otherwise, the state gets whatever bits of you they want once you kick it. Think of it as just another inheritance tax.

Holy smokes.

Via Insty. Source articles here, there, there too, and everywhere else.

Posted by Drew458     on 01/13/2008 at 04:13 PM   
Filed Under: • Miscellaneous •  
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