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Tuesday 7 October 2008

Letters

Spectator readers respond to recent articles

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

Banning bells?

Sir: Charles Moore (The Spectator’s Notes, 12 January) contemplated the banning of church bells in Oxford by politically correct cowards unwilling to turn down the application for the use of artificially augmented calls to prayer from the mosque.

I cannot understand what all the fuss is about. There is nothing in the Koran about the use of loudspeakers. There is nothing to prevent imams from competing with the noise of traffic and calling their prayers as imams did for many centuries. Of course, I would hope that the city authorities would indicate, as they turn down the applications for loudspeakers, that they would be likely to grant an application for bells to be rung from the mosque.

Rt Hon. Lord Tebbit CH
House of Lords, London SW1

Taxing aliens

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