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In the unlikely event that anyone wants my organs, it should be up to me

16 January 2008

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Rod Liddle says that the notion of ‘compulsory donations’ is oxymoronic and the pinnacle of the medical profession’s zeal to get its hands on our corpses

The main cheerleader for the rip-out-their-kidneys lobby comes, of course, from the medical profession. The government’s chief medical officer Sir Liam Donaldson has argued for compulsory organ donations for a very long time and takes a sort of fundamentalist position: it may well be that Sir Liam wishes to rip your kidneys out and give them to someone else regardless or not of whether you are dead. But certainly, once dead, he believes the surgeons should immediately wade in with their secateurs and their freezer bags. Sir Liam, you will remember, was the chap who urged the government to go further and further in its anti-smoking legislation: if it was up to him, smoking would be banned in private homes and perhaps also on the moon. He is also the chap who a year or two back confidently predicted, on the BBC’s Sunday AM programme, that at least 50,000 British people would die from avian flu and that a death toll of 750,000 was by no means out of the question. The death toll so far has been, of course, nil — but we have had no revised forecast from old Liam.

Even the various lobbying groups in favour of compulsory donations (a typically New Labour oxymoron, that, by the way) accept that the NHS does not have the infrastructure to cope with a large increase in donated organs; that, in effect, changing the law in the way the government envisages would be pointless. But common sense rarely impinges when the medical profession are astride their latest hobby horse, whooping and whipping away. Grab that liver before it’s cold!

The notion that your body, once the life has been squeezed out of it, should be the property of the state and subject to whatever hacking about the doctors deem necessary is, of course, theft of the most invasive and iniquitous kind. It also strips from the dying those last vestiges of dignity and volition. I wouldn’t for a second contend with the fact that we do need more donor organs, especially kidneys; but the answer to that problem is a campaign of persuasion and education, rather than the arrival of the transplant butchers as soon as you’ve breathed your last.

The main accusation to be levelled at the BMA and the GMC and what have you is that they fail to treat patients as human beings; that they are viewed instead as an array of disembodied, problematic health issues; a dodgy ticker here, clogged-up lungs there and so on. You might expect the doctors, then, to view a cadaver simply as an inert mass which, by rights, belongs to them. But the government is there to protect us from such base utilitarianism. Or at least it should be.

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Peter Monro

January 17th, 2008 10:40am Report this comment

where is the rest of the article ?

Peter Monro

January 17th, 2008 10:40am Report this comment

where is the rest of the article ?

Dan Boston

January 17th, 2008 12:43pm Report this comment

Agree with the points Mr Liddle makes but I have one small correction to make. Organs are taken from your body when you are ALIVE. The organs rapidly deteriorate when you are dead and so (as is the case with condemned Chinese prisoners, who are operated on before they are shot) they have to whip the organs out whilst you still have some life in you. You are of course deaded after this procedure. Are you going to trust a junior doctor, as an agent of government policy, to decide when it’s you time to go?

Dwight Vandryver

January 17th, 2008 11:33pm Report this comment

There are three points to make (at least). Firstly, a survey should be conducted of the medical profession to see what proportion would refuse to donate their organs. Secondly, what guarantee would there be that the Hypocratic Oath would be maintained to the moment of natural death before the organ pillage began. Thirdly, transplantable organs have a considerable market value; therefore, if a person's organs were removed for transplantation, the NHS should automatically pay all funeral costs of the deceased. Personally, I would opt out of the proposed scheme, but they can have my willie for free (a nasty piece of work).

Laura Fox

January 18th, 2008 5:30pm Report this comment

Dear Rod, If at death, one leaves a expressed wish, it will be followed: either in favour of donating his/hers organs to a fellow human, or of donating his/her organs to the soil's bacteria. (The option of “keeping” the organs does not really exist.) The question is what to do when the dead one’s wishes are unknown. The doctors will have to guess – either way. Currently the law says that they must presume that the dead person was in favour of donating his organs to the soil's bacteria. The new proposal is to presume that he/she would prefer to donate them to a fellow human being. In other words: the current law presumes that the dead are all selfish bastards. And the new proposal that the dead are reasonably decent, compassionate people.

Greg Ferry

January 18th, 2008 8:52pm Report this comment

As a nurse - I just don't trust doctors as a species - sure they just want to make a bucket load of money out of yer bits. I have been present when the bits are harvested - not a very elegant time. I wont be donating mine.

Euripides RE Sponds

January 18th, 2008 9:39pm Report this comment

Compulsory organ donation in Brown's new stalinist Jerusalem? #over my dead body!

Shaun Hexter

January 19th, 2008 1:25pm Report this comment

Thanks, Rod, for standing up for us. One little argument to add to these: it is far better to take the organs before the body is actually dead - hence the changes in the definition of death (brain stems and all that). I, for one, am not open to persuasion. My body is not for pilfering.

Hassan

January 21st, 2008 3:54pm Report this comment

Once Mr. Liddle has finished scaremongering readers with images of heartless (forgive the pun) authoritarian doctors intent on stealing our organs from our cold dead corpses, and conflating his anger at New Labour and anti-smoking laws with proposed 'compulsory organ donations', we can look at this debate objectively. Under the proposed laws people still have the ability to 'opt-out' meaning it is not 'compulsory' for them to donate their organs. If a widespread public education campaign is undertaken to make sure everyone is aware that in Britain, your acceptance to donate organs is assumed unless you say you do not want to, just as people need to know that as citizens they can vote or they have a right to a lawyer to defend them in court, then what is the problem? This is a suitable solution to the current problem of public apathy. Most people would be willing to donate their organs upon death to save somebody else's life, but being human we either don't bother, or we delay registering as a donor, thinking "well I wont be dying any time soon", when of course anyone can die at any time in their lives. The result is many willing organ donors dying, and patients needing organ transplants waiting longer, with a greater risk of death.

Peter Gompertz

January 22nd, 2008 2:08am Report this comment

Re Hassans' comment about public apathy, what this Stalinist proposal will do is depend on the intertia ( aka public apathy ) of those who do not wish to contribute to such a 'brave new world'. I will be opting out as the government has had far more than its' fair share of me already; and the thought of my organs keeping some poxy Labour voter alive would be enough to have me spinning in my compost heap.

Catriona.

January 23rd, 2008 4:26am Report this comment

I DO love "The Spectator" because it publishes articles like this! Donations can't be compulsory.I don't want to be killed off for my parts which,on the whole, are probably pretty 'iffy'.... Can you trust someone to say they've done all they can if they're desperately short of say,a brain for a BBc announcer?

Freddy

February 1st, 2008 8:29am Report this comment

How do you opt out ? Does it have to be registered in your National ID Database records ? Rod, I love the figure of 30,000 deaths from medical incompetence. Can you cite a credible source ?