Your Organs or Your Life
While reading the always-excellent Kevin Maguire on the Daily Mirror site, I noticed an online poll asking whether organ donation should be made compulsory. I gather the poll was a distorted response to the recent news that the Health Secretary asked his advisers to look into a system whereby everyone is presumed to have given consent to their organs being used after death, unless they opt-out of the register. The idea being that enough will stay on the register so as to make up for the organ shortage. A shortfall which, a quick search tells me, leaves 1 in 10 people on the transplant list dying before they receive an organ (which amounted to 400 people last year alone).
The thing that caught my attention was that 64% of respondents disagreed which a compulsory system (which no one is considering anyway, though never mind – I imagine the issues are conflated in the public’s mind). Perhaps for religious reasons, I could understand people objecting to compulsory organ donation, but for the rest of us, I do not believe that squeamishness – which I also feel, especially towards “personal” organs like eyes etc. – is justification enough for disregarding the pressing health needs of our fellow human beings. That medical science is advanced enough to recycle our bodies after death is amazing – that most of us in Britain choose not to support its application is equally amazing. According to the BBC, transplant surgeons, patient groups, the British Medical Association and even the Lib Dems all support presumed consent, and it’s easy to see why:
“While nearly 90 per cent of the UK population say they’d be willing to donate their organs after death, only about 20 per cent of people have actually put their names on the NHS Organ Donor Register.”
Thus, presumed consent would presumably have all of the benefits, and none of the charges of authoritarianism, that would mark an actually compulsory system.
We should test this supposed willingness of the British population; after all, there would be nothing to stop people removing their names from the register if they felt that concerned. This is especially needed, given that the oft-mentioned alternative (allowing people to sell their organs) would be obviously grossly distasteful, not to mention exploitative towards the poor, compared to some gentle prodding of people’s consciences. It should surely be the basic civic duty of all of us, in fact our duty as human beings, to assist another in need – especially when such help would not adversely affect our own lives. The only obstacle would be charges of a Dr. Frankenstein-like state robbing the deceased of their body parts, which could undoubtedly be countered with a public information campaign and the reminder that any one of us could find ourselves ending up as the “1 in 10″.
To end on a blatant appeal to the bleeding hearts of this alleged 90% of potential volunteers: how many more people need to die because we are willing to tackle an admittedly uncomfortable but nevertheless crucial issue?
If you are interested in joining the organ donor register, follow the link here. I’m on it. You get a wonderful sense of moral superiority, so go ahead.
My problem with presumed consent – if problem you call it, little niggling doubt is probably more accurate – is that if there is no system whereby someone consciously puts their name on the list, then surgeons and doctors have an interest in ensuring that “dying” people go through as little trauma in respect of their organs as possible.
That means, at the extreme, dying people might be denied a drug which could put off their death, even for a matter of days, if it means that their organs are viable for transplantation. If the system is opt-in, then I imagine that even such a safeguard as not allowing doctors to know who opted in or out until the point of death would not be much use.
All that said, I’m not a medical professional and I will definitely have a word with a few of my medic friends when next I see them, to gauge opinion.
Well, my first thought would be that, even if a sizeable number of people opted-out, enough would stay on so as to end the current shortage of organ donations (where only 3,000 operations are undertaken each year despite a transplant list three times that size).
Without that shortage, no doctor would even need to think of going to such ethically dubious lengths as you describe.
In any case, I think any system along the lines suggested would require extensive professional and public oversight to remedy any problems if/when they arise. But while there may be technical issues to resolve, do you have a problem with presumed consent in and of itself?
No. I think it should be re-instituted in the trades union movement w.r.t. the political levy, so why not with organs? All for a greater good.