Gordon Brown Backs Off Presumed Consent for Organ Donation
Well, apparently the people of the United Kingdom weren't too comfortable with their bodies being deemed organ sources unless they explicitly opted out of being a "donor." How else explain PM Gordon Brown's walk-back of his support for presumed consent? Good. In the alternative, the government plans an intense program of education to increase donation rates. From The Guardian story:Presumed consent for organ donation, backed by Gordon Brown at the weekend, was put on the back burner yesterday as a government taskforce unveiled measures it claimed would increase donations by 50% without it.
Education is good. Coercion is bad. Brown made the right decision.
The Organ Donation Taskforce, whose report was immediately accepted in full by the government, wants a body set up to promote donation throughout the UK instead of it being a matter for individual hospitals or regions. It said the move, for which the government pledged £11m, would transform organ donation and boost transplants by 1,200 a year.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 8:05 PM
2 Comments
2 Comments:
Presumed donation? Isn't that an old Monty Python skit? I seem to recall one where they'd come for organs from live people. ("But I'm still using it!")
At the time, it was funny because it was so off-the-wall. It's scary in real life. *shudder*
Dear Christine, Get real.... presumed consent has a laundry list of ethics attached to it. Waiting lists for organs in most non-presumed consent countries stretch from 5 to 8 years. The reality is westerner societies are now running to poor countries to purchase organs from living victims of poverty. Presumed consent is the only moral and just manor to resolve the problem of the rich exploiting the poor as walking body parts.
Some countries, to remedy this, have suggested to allow people in their own countries to sell their organs... (The poor) while others buy... (The rich).
This would cause a greater social gap between the haves and the have not’s..... Literally... Would you be sound of mind knowing your great, great, great, grand-daughter who was a single mom sold her kidney and part of her liver for $5000 dollars so she could afford to pay for car repairs? When instead a person who died the day before, who had no problem with organ donation and just never signed anything.... was buried whole. This person could have solved the social injustice of turning human body parts into another commodity.
Presumed Consent is the only moral and ethical high ground.
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