Have a heart
Sir: I was longing to disagree with Rod Liddle that organ donation should continue to depend upon a positive act to opt into the programme (‘Hands off my organs’, 19 January).
However, Mr Brown’s plans include New Labour’s usual targets and tick-boxes. This means that hospitals would be allocated funding according to the number of organs that they harvest, making life-and-death decisions the property of accountants and commissioners. It would be a matter of time, for example, before families of ‘vegetative’ patients were reminded of their duty and encouraged to let their loved ones’ organs be used to save others, despite the fact that the science of awakening such patients is still in its infancy and already producing unexpected successes.
Further afield, last August the US saw its first court case where a doctor was accused of hastening the death of a disabled person in order to obtain the kidneys for another patient. In many hospitals in Canada, organs are harvested not after brain death but after loss of cardiac function, which may be treatable; and in 2006, the BBC claimed to have obtained proof that newborn babies were being killed for their stem cells in hospitals in the Ukraine.
Under normal circumstances I can see no problem with an ‘opt out’ clause, which has been proposed many times; but ‘normal’ is not one of the words which I would use to describe circumstances in Britain under the present government. Until we have leaders who evince some humanity, I have no option but to agree with Mr Liddle.
Gerry Dorrian
Fulbourn, Cambridgeshire
Sir: With respect to the new default assumption that our organs can be used for transplants after our deaths, a simple alternative policy which would both boost donor rates and be acceptable to more people seems to have been overlooked. Currently, when you register with an NHS GP practice, you have an introductory chat with the nurse.
She could explain the issue of organ donation to you and ask if you would be willing to sign a consent form. My guess is that the majority of the population would agree; it seems unjustified to insist upon more desperate measures before such common-sense solutions have been tried.
Helen Jackson
Cambridge
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