OPT OUT IF YOU DON’T WANT TO DONATE ORGANS
ALL Britons may soon have to ‘opt out’ if they do not want their organs to be donated after death.
In a surprise move, Theresa May yesterday announced plans to make it easier for doctors in England to take organs for transplants without explicit consent.
In Wales, consent for organ donation is already presumed while people in England must still sign up to say they are happy for their organs to be used.
The Prime Minister said there will now be a consultation on changing the rules.
Supporters of the plan say it would boost donations and save lives. But critics say it is wrong to take body parts from those who have died when they may not have agreed in life.
In her speech at the Conservative conference in Manchester, Mrs May said: ‘Our ability to help people
who need transplants is limited by the number of organ donors. That is why last year 500 people died because a suitable organ was not available. So to address this challenge ... we will change that system, shifting the balance of presumption in favour of organ donation, working on behalf of the most vulnerable.’
The devolved Welsh government changed the rules in December 2015 so doctors can assume all over-18s consent to be donors after their death unless they have opted out. Relatives still have the right to object to a loved one’s organs being removed, but if they can’t be contacted a transplant will go ahead.
The Scottish Government is bringing in a ‘soft’ opt-out system, meaning organs cannot be removed without the explicit consent of relatives.
Downing Street said the consultation document for England will be brought out in the next few weeks.
Last year, there were 5, 11 people in England on the transplant list. Around three people die every day across the UK waiting for an organ transplant. The British Medical Association has long called for opting-out for England. It has argued that while 66 per cent of people say they would donate their organs, only 39 per cent had signed up to the donor register.
Simon Gillespie, chief executive at the British Heart Foundation, said: ‘There is a desperate shortage of organ donors, meaning people needlessly die as they wait for organs. Introducing a soft-opt out system in England will mean more people will get the life-saving transplant they desperately need.’
Dr Chaand Nagpaul, chairman of the BMA council, said the plan for an opt-out system was ‘excellent news’ and that it ‘has the potential to save many lives’.
But Peter Saunders, from the Christian Medical Fellowship, said: ‘Presumed consent is illiberal, unethical, unproven and and is based on the false presumption that the organs of deceased people are the property of the state rather than the family. Furthermore there is no proof it increases organ donations.
‘Presumed consent legislation is based on the legal fiction that people who have done nothing – neither signed an opt-in nor an opt-out register – have deliberately chosen to donate their organs.’
Nine years ago, an independent panel of scientists concluded the law in England should stay the same. The Organ Donation Taskforce, appointed by Gordon Brown, said there was no evidence a change to the law would boost donation rates.
However since the opt-out system was introduced in Wales, the number waiting for a transplant fell by more than a third, from 309 in 2010/11 to 193 in 2015/16. If the same trend happened in England, a further 1,800 lives could be saved.
Organ transplants in the UK have hit record levels and more than 23.5million people are on the donor register, a rise of more than 2million in two years following a government drive urging people to sign up. However, those opting out increased to 27,559 in the same period.