PM: change organ donation system
Updated on 13 January 2008
Gordon Brown calls for a change in the UK's organ donation system so that organs can be removed automatically after people die.
The prime minister today waded in to one of the most emotive issues in modern medicine.
He signalled he favours changing the system of organ donation so that organs can be removed automatically after people die unless they've expressly stated they do not want that.
Mr Brown said moving to "presumed consent" could significantly increase the number of transplant organs.
But opinion is deeply divided. One patients' group said the gift of life must be voluntary, not reliant on inertia and ignorance.
Everyone would automatically be placed on the NHS organ donation register unless their family objects - or they choose to opt out while still alive.
More than 8,000 Britons are currently waiting and hoping for an organ transplant. More than 1,000 people die each year before a suitable donor is found.
Emily Thackeray was lucky. Her own lungs destroyed by cystic fibrosis, she received a double lung transplant last year after a 22-month wait.
Writing in today's Sunday Telegraph, Gordon Brown unvelied a new report from the government's organ donation task force promising an overhaul of the donation system. It calls for a better infrastructure and twice as many donor coordiators to help fix Britain's organ shortage.
But Mr Brown also raised the controversial question of introducing "presumed consent" modelled on the system in Spain. Everyone would automatically be placed on the NHS organ donation register unless their family objects - or they choose to opt out while still alive.
The issue is a politically fraught one. The government rejected presumed consent in 2004, with Gordon Brown himself voting against it.
The figures seem to support presumed consent. Spain has the highest number of donors per million of population, at 34.
Austria and France also have opt-out laws and have higher donation rates too - respectively 24 and 21 per million.
Even the USA, with similar rules to ours, still manages 22 donors per million people, compared to the UK's 13.
It suggests there is more to successful donation rates than just presumed consent.
