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Call for organ donor reform

Only those patients who specifically stated before death that their organs should not be removed would be exempt from the proposed new rules.

Calls for a move towards a system of "presumed consent" for organ donation comes as the UK's National Health Service struggles with a shortage of organs.

The move follows revelations that a hospital accepted organs for transplant on the condition that they were used to save the life of a white patient.

The British Medical Association's annual conference will debate the issue on Thursday.

Dr Michael Wilks, chairman of the BMA's ethics committee, said patients were dying while waiting for organs.

"Presumed consent is currently the only real solution to going some way towards improving the organ donation rate," he said.

Relatives often vetoed the removal of organs from dead people who carried a donor card, said Dr Wilks.

He said it was too much to expect grieving people to cope with questions of whether or not their dead relatives should donate.

"One of the advantages of presumed consent legislation would be that these discussions would take place within families," said Dr Wilks.

"You would have discussions along the lines of 'well, I don't want to opt out of presumed consent, I'm very happy that this country has a law that says my organs can be used after my death'.

"It absolves the family from any involvement at a time when their involvement is incredibly stressful."

The motion calling for the government to introduce a presumed consent scheme has been amended after it emerged that the NHS had used organs donated on the condition that they did not go to "coloured people".

The motion now insists that all organs donated to a hospital are done so unconditionally and should be used for any suitable recipient.

The Health Secretary, Frank Dobson, has ordered an inquiry into the circumstances surrounding a donation of organs to the Northern General Hospital in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, last July.

Three major organs were removed from the donor, and the kidneys were subsequently transplanted to a white person in another hospital.

Mr Dobson said he was "appalled" by the incident. "I have not been an opponent of the apartheid movement for the whole of my adult life to see it introduced into the NHS," he said. "We will not tolerate it."

Thursday's edition of the Daily Mail reports that Manchester Royal Infirmary refused organs from a dead Asian because "racist conditions" were attached by relatives.

The debate on organ donation is part of the fourth and final day of the BMA's Annual Representative Meeting in Belfast, which will see ethical issues come to the fore.

A newly-formed alliance of doctors' groups will attempt to overturn proposed guidelines on the withdrawal of artificial feeding from severely incapacitated patients during a debate on end-of-life issues.

The proposed guidelines recommend that doctors can withdraw artificial nutrition and hydration from patients who are not terminally ill but are "severely incapacitated with no realistic prospect of recovery", such as those suffering from dementia and stroke.

The BMA says the guidelines were drawn up in consultation with members and have the backing of the majority of doctors.

But the Medical Alliance Opposing the Guidance on Withholding and Withdrawing Food and Fluids, which claims to represent 2,000 doctors, argues that the power to withhold artificial feeding and hydration amounts to a "death ethic".

Dr Anthony Cole, one of the founders of the alliance, said: "The direct omission or withdrawal of nutrition and hydration with the aim, object and intention of ending life is inhumane and can never be justified.

"There is an obligation on all doctors to relieve suffering from hunger and thirst as long as those means are not excessively burdensome or dangerous."

Relevant Stories

Doctors - making decisions on a knife edge (07 Jul 99 | UK)
The ethics of transplantation (07 Jul 99 | Health)
Head to head: Donor ethics (07 Jul 99 | Health)
Virtual debate on doctor-assisted suicides (04 Jul 99 | Health)
Withdrawing treatment: The reaction (23 Jun 99 | Health)
BMA guidance: The main points (23 Jun 99 | Health)
Dobson: 'No health apartheid' (07 Jul 99 | Health)

Internet Links

British Medical Association
The BMA guidance on end of life issues
Pro-Life Alliance
British Organ Donor Society

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