Last updated 16:02, Friday, 21 November 2008

On Monday, Gordon Brown’s organ donation taskforce reported that it could not recommend legislation to ‘presume’ consent for the removal of our organs after death.

Seat of government: Artwork outside the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh where lavish spending has led to inequality between the nations according to writer Geoffrey Graham

It concluded that such a measure would contribute towards a loss of trust in the NHS and the medical profession.

Such suspicions are wholly understandable given a choice between spending to save a life and the kudos for hospitals to meet (yet another) target every time that a cadaver becomes available, from which the organs can be reaped and harvested at will – and perhaps even before it becomes a cadaver.

The taskforce made other recommendations to increase organ doanation by 50 per cent in the next five years, but Mr Brown’s reaction has been to express disappointment – and to warn that he may yet take steps to change the law if targets for organ donation aren’t met.

May I ask what god gave this micro-managing man and his friends any right to set targets over what happens to our bodies – or to claim ownership of them?

Under any scheme of presumed consent there would be wholly justifiable suspicion on the part of ordinary people that even less effort will be made to preserve life in the elderly, frail, and terminally-ill, when the harvest is needed to meet targets.

What is needed is more publicity, together with hospital doctors who have the guts to ask those difficult questions after a death has occurred.

And how about some financial contribution from the Government to go towards the cost of the funerals of people whose organs have been donated?

EDDIE WOODTHORPE
Stainburn
Workington