The Spectator

Letters | 26 January 2008

Spectator readers respond to recent articles

issue 26 January 2008

Have a heart

Sir: I was longing to disagree with Rod Liddle that organ donation should continue to depend upon a positive act to opt into the programme (‘Hands off my organs’, 19 January).

However, Mr Brown’s plans include New Labour’s usual targets and tick-boxes. This means that hospitals would be allocated funding according to the number of organs that they harvest, making life-and-death decisions the property of accountants and commissioners. It would be a matter of time, for example, before families of ‘vegetative’ patients were reminded of their duty and encouraged to let their loved ones’ organs be used to save others, despite the fact that the science of awakening such patients is still in its infancy and already producing unexpected successes.

Further afield, last August the US saw its first court case where a doctor was accused of hastening the death of a disabled person in order to obtain the kidneys for another patient.

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