Brown is in support of donor campaign

Jan 14 2008 by Paul Loraine, The Journal

SUCCESS is in sight for The Journal’s Legacy of Life campaign after Prime Minister Gordon Brown gave his support to a policy of “presumed consent” on organ donations.

The Prime Minister has backed the idea of removing organs from dead patients without their explicit permission, meaning hospitals would be within their rights to take organs unless people had actively opted out of the donor register.

Mr Brown’s stance is in line with the Legacy of Life campaign run with Sue and Richard Cansdale, of Hartburn, near Morpeth, after they lost their daughter Zoe in a motorbike accident in September 1998.

The Cansdales were able to donate Zoe’s corneas and heart valves to patients in desperate need of them.

But other organs went to waste because she was not carrying her donor card when she died.

Yesterday Mrs Cansdale said: “Presumed consent will mean many more people will have the opportunity to have transplants.

“The problem comes if people think the Government are demanding their organs. There can’t be pressure of any kind to donate organs.”

Mr Cansdale said: “This has to be done alongside a massive, sensitive publicity campaign to let people know about the change.

“I’m delighted that Gordon Brown is talking on these lines but people have to be aware of what they are doing, otherwise they will feel they have been conned into donating.

“The terrible worry is that there will be names muddled up and people will end up donating who did not wish to. We feel that organ donation is so significant and so important that we have to do everything we can to give people the chance to make an informed decision.”

Ministers will embark shortly on a review of the existing system, with doctors and nurses expected to sign up more donors.

But Mr Brown indicated his backing for the more radical approach, which is similar to that in Spain where there are more organ donors per head of population than anywhere in the world. Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, he said: “A system of this kind seems to have the potential to close the aching gap between the potential benefits of transplant surgery in the UK and the limits imposed by our current system of consent.”

However, the move is likely to face fierce opposition from patients’ groups.

Joyce Robins, of the Patient Concern watchdog, said: “We are totally opposed to this.

“They call it presumed consent, but it is no consent at all.

“They are relying on inertia and ignorance to get the results that they want.”

Meanwhile, Katherine Murphy, of the Patients’ Association charity, said matters of individual conscience should not be interfered with by the state.

She said: “If people want to give the gift of life, that is their right, but it must be something that is a voluntary matter.”

Page 2: Parents explain to teenagers that donation saves