ORGANS: YOU WILL HAVE TO OPT OUT
As MPs back change in donation law...
MINISTERS backed a change in the law yesterday that would turn everyone into an organ donor unless they opt out. Presumed consent is set to be introduced in england, in line with Scotland and Wales, after a Private Member’s Bill was passed unopposed in the Commons.
health minister Jackie Doyle-Price said the Government planned to call it Max’s Law after Max Johnson, ten, who was saved by a heart transplant.
‘We are determined to ensure that we secure more organs for transplant. We are very concerned that we are losing lives unnecessarily,’ she said.
‘Our best estimates are that this change will secure an additional 100 donors a year, which could lead to the saving of 200 extra lives.’
The Bill, tabled by Labour’s Geoffrey Robinson, was given an unopposed second reading by MPs and will now undergo further scrutiny in Parliament. But Conservative MP Philip Davies said many people had ‘misgivings’ about the State presuming they ‘ have consented to something when they have not’.
MPs heard that around 1,000 patients die each year while waiting for a transplant, while england has some of the lowest rates of consent for organ donation in western europe.
Tory Peter heaton-Jones spoke about his constituent Keira Ball, nine, who died in a car crash and was able to
donate her kidneys, heart and pancreas, saving four lives in the process – including that of Max, who received her heart.
The North Devon MP said Keira and Max’s stories ‘demonstrate that more organs mean more saved lives’.
Labour MP Julie Elliott, whose eldest daughter, Rebecca, has chronic kidney disease and is awaiting a transplant, said the 36-year- old, who has a daughter of six, requires dialysis for eight hours every night. The Sunderland Central MP added: ‘ As a mother, my natural instinct has always been to make things better for your children. It’s what we all do.
‘It’s a terrible situation to be in, a situsystem. ation where you can’t fix something that’s gone terribly wrong.’
However, Professor Chris Rudge, a leading transplant surgeon, has said he would opt out on the grounds that the State should not presume to take a citizen’s organs without permission.
Professor Rudge, a former national director for transplantation at the Department of Health, said in October: ‘I would opt out because organ donation should be a present, and not for the State to assume that they can take my organs without asking me.
‘No one knows better than me the problems of thousands of people waiting for a transplant.’
But he added: ‘I am so horribly opposed to a change in the law.’
Former Labour frontbencher Dan Jarvis said those who opted out should not be criticised.
He added: ‘If people want to opt out, that is absolutely fine, and I am hugely respectful of any decision people want to make.
Tory MP Nigel Huddlestone said: ‘We are talking about a genuinely life- or- death issue. Every single day, somebody dies because they do not get the transplant they desperately need.’
Labour MP Virendra Sharma told how his brother had been waiting five years for a kidney. He said the law would particularly help ethnic minority families, whose communities were 50 per cent more likely to refuse permission for donations.
Simon Gillespie of the British Heart Foundation said: ‘There is a desperate shortage. People needlessly die as they wait for organs.’
But Peter Saunders, of the Christian Medical Fellowship, said: ‘Presumed consent is illiberal, unethical, unproven and is based on the false presumption that the organs of deceased people are the property of the State rather than the family. There is no proof it increases organ donations.’
Former Cabinet minister Dame Cheryl Gillan said the law should leave ‘room for relatives to be consulted and to withdraw consent... while trying to do everything possible to increase organ donation.’
Tory MP Philip Davies warned that similar legislation in Wales had led to a ‘ reduction, not an increase, in donors’.
In Wales, where an opt-out system was introduced in December 2015, there was a dip in the number of deceased donors from 64 in 2015-16 to 61 in 2016-17. This resulted in a drop in organ transplants from 214 to 187.
Miss Doyle-Price said: ‘It’s too early to draw conclusions about the number of organs the change in Wales has secured, but we have seen an increase in consent and opting on to the register.’
The Organ Donation (Deemed Consent) Bill will now be examined by a committee of MPs. It faces further stages in the Commons before being debated in the House of Lords.