Whose life is it anyway?
Should I ever end up plugged into a machine, please turn the switch off & go to the pub. If any bits of me are of any use at the arse-end of my licenious lifestyle, please feel free to help yourselves. What ever is left after that, please set light to – hopefully a Viking sized conflegration that in a final gesture of defiance, will help with keeping open however many holes we will have in the ozone layer at that time … Its my life, my body, my decision – or not, if Sir Liam Donaldson, the Government’s Chief Medical Busybody has his way …
The chief medical officer wants everyone to be treated as organ donors after death unless they explicitly opt out of the scheme. Sir Liam Donaldson believes the shortage of kidneys, livers and hearts is so acute that the country needs a donation system that will presume patients have given consent for their body parts to be transplanted.
So, in the finest Nu-Labour socialist traditions, they have taken your money, rights & children, but now not even your own body is your own any more…
Those who wanted to opt out would have to register in a similar way to those who now carry organ donor cards. This could be done through a central NHS database or through other documentation, such as driving licences
& these proposals come complete with yet another central government database that will run years late & billions over budget.
The busy body British Medical Association has been agitating for presumed consent to be the default position. In a report snapily entitled Presumed Consent for Organ Donation, they state-
Each year, many people die waiting for organ transplant. At the same time, bodies are buried or cremated complete with organs that could have been used to save lives, not because the deceased objected to organ donation but simply because they never got round to signing up to the NHS Organ Donor Register or informing their relatives of their wishes.
Dr Vivian Nathanson, the BMA’s head of science and ethics, believes British public opinion is coming round to an opt-out system
We are now getting closer to a system of presumed consent she said. We have exhausted all other ways of increasing the number of organs available but people are still dying on the waiting list, and that is making us more courageous.
Now it is not that I have any objection whatsoever to organs being used to save lives, but I have a massive problem with the Government stepping in to seize the body parts of the recently deceased. How long before the phone rings late one night & you are informed by your GP, that you don’t need two kidneys any more & they will be round in the morning to take the other one??
Comments
They have a thing here that you can register as a "Donor" on your driver's license here, screw-'em - I opted-out. They can't have anything of mine - won't want it either anyhow, but that's another story.
Posted by: DirtCrashr | July 16, 2007 10:14 PM
I don't know about you but I got my driving licence in '99 and it had a tickbox to give consent for your organs to be harvested. Naturally, I ticked that box because I understand the fact that they're no good to you when you're dead; why cling onto somet' you'll never be able to use again when someone else needs it?
My crap analogy is thus: you put your old telly out with the rubbish, then you guard it until bin day to make sure that it goes to the tip and nobody else can get their hands on it. What's the point? You're not going to use it any more so it makes no difference to you if some stingy bugger pinches it out of your bin and gets some more use out of it. There's defiance and then there's being a rebel for the sake of it.
Posted by: Tim | July 19, 2007 1:23 PM
Oops, I went off on one a bit there. I got reminded of someone who went on about not wanting to donate his organs 'cos he didn't want to get chopped up. Actually, that goes for parents that refuse to allow their kids organs to be donated 'cos they want to bury the 'entire' body... like that makes a difference when the kid's dead.
It's also easily forgotten that organs and complete bodies are needed for research and training medics too, personally I prefer trainee surgeons to get some practice on a body they can't kill before trying the real thing.
Posted by: Tim again | July 19, 2007 1:37 PM
They might get the parts if they PAY my estate, having taxed me to death already - which will probably be include un-expired bar-tab and the bill for a carton of smokes. From working in fundraising for the Medical School of a local Big Private University I'm aware of the demand for cheap cadavers - but they really should begin with their Leftwing faculty who want to equalize EVERYTHING for free, everywhere. Judging by the latest power-mad and self-aggrandizing MedSchool Dean I'd recommend they begin there - except there would be no brain to harvest.
Posted by: DirtCrashr | July 19, 2007 11:53 PM
Now that is an interesting suggestion. Clearly your organs have a value after you have either voluntarily or involuntarily decided you have no further use for them... and if the state wishes to avail itself them then you should be compensated. Perhaps we could use a couple of kidneys and a heart, the odd cornea or lliver to offset inheritance tax? It won't catch on, but it lives firmly in the spirit of the free market. Tricky.
Posted by: tricky | July 21, 2007 5:02 PM
I, for one, am not an organ donor and I'm proud of it.
If I'm brain dead and my body is hooked up the life-support machines, somebody please turn off the machines and wheel my body to the mourge. The thought of my brain-dead body being wheeled into the operating theatre and carved up for "spare parts" doesn't sit with me very well. Besides, I want to be buried whole (organs and all) so I can give the earth one Hell of a feast and help contribute to the "cycle of life" and the environment.
Posted by: Jason | December 19, 2007 11:28 AM