AIBU to think that it is immoral to have financial incentives to harvest peoples' organs on the NHS?

[ZhenThereWereTwo]

AIBU to think that to give hospitals financial incentives for numbers of organs donated leaves a lot of scope for corruption, especially when dealing with elderly, vulnerable, disabled or people with learning difficulty. Alder Hay and many other stories show us that medical professionals do not always act with integrity or to the Hippocratic oath.

Article here.

Evidence portfolio from NHS here.

Whatever you think about the proposals, I would encourage you to add your voice by filling in the survey here.

It is likely that they will not have many people doing the survey from non-medical backgrounds as it is not widely advertised, but it is your way of giving your opinion on the proposals.

My MIL was in intensive care with only 20% chance of survival, they told us she would not wake up again as she was on life support and in a coma with little brain activity.

Well she did wake up and she was no vegetable. Would they have harvested her organs under these new proposals, I think so.

Organs are harvested when technically you are still alive.

Some hospitals give the donor an anaesthetic and some don?t, there is medical research that shows brain stem dead people respond to pain stimuli.

The government has no right to lay claim to my organs unless I opt to give them. This automatic donation unless you opt out infringes my human rights to decide what happens to my body once I am no longer conscious in a U.K. hospital.

To be quite frank these proposals scare me. I will be telling everyone I know to be very careful about organ donation, because there are many documented cases of people waking up from comas, strokes and even some waking up in the morgue.

So unless it is your intention to occasionally kill and harvest people that could have survived, against their wishes in some cases, you need to think about these proposals. I think organ donation is important, but not at the expense of our human rights. A sick person doesn't have more rights to my organs than I have rights to choose whether to donate or not.

tsk. just like now they don't bother opting IN

"'Allo, can we have your liver?"

Fucking ridiculous, sensationalist OP!
Have you read the bloody evidence?
Have you seen the statistics on people dying on the waiting list?
Did they ask to harvest your MIL's organs - no they didn't.

Thanks for the link though, have completed the survey.

oh, Huia, that made me laugh!

Agree with everything Hecate has said.

"Most organ donations are from brain stem dead donors. This is where the donor has been diagnosed with brain stem death following a severe brain injury, and the circulation continues to be supported by artificial ventilation until the donated organs have been removed.
Heartbeating donations have a high success rate because the organs are supported by oxygenated blood until they are removed from the body of the donor."

www.nhs.uk/conditions/Organ-donation/Pages/Introduction.aspx

To be clear, in these cases the donor, although brain stem dead, is warm, pink, has a heartbeat and pulse and is 'breathing' via a ventilator (ie the ventilator is doing the breathing). The life-support equipment is not turned off until after the organs have been removed in the operating theatre.

Many people do not realise this, which is one of the reasons why I do not support an 'opt out' system.

Are the families of the children of the Alder Hay scandal morons too then, you are without compassion.

They took their organs for profit. They have taken organs without consent before. What is to stop them from doing it again? If you have no family, no advocate, how do you complain when you are already dead?

They are talking about when it is correct to withdraw care as part of these proposals too. If you withdraw care from a person who has a chance of survival then you are effectively killing them.

You say that they only harvest people who are pronounced dead, but there are cases of people who have been pronounced dead who have woken up so it is not so cut and dry.

What about people who wake up from long term comas? There is not enough known about the science of the human brain.

What is the problem with just opting in? Is it because not enough people want to opt in, is that the problem? Couldn't we just do more to encourage people to opt in rather than taking their right to choose away?

They took their organs for profit.

It wasn't just about profit, some of the organs and tissues taken were just left in jars etc.

This fitted in with an arrogance around maternity and new born deaths that has now been addressed.

SANDS had not been created and there was little miscarriage support, so it was more about the not counting babies/fetuses, as humans in their own right.

Except your quoting something that happened nearly 20 years ago and let to "Human Tissue Act 2004, which overhauled legislation regarding the handling of human tissues in the UK and created the Human Tissue Authority.[1]"*

Find me something that happened recently and is tied to this survey I may stop thinking you're a moron.

Until then? You're a moron.

*Source

Sorry, you're. Moronic people make me lose my grammar and spelling.

No agenda, I have my views yes and I am free to state them.

I have provided the article I read, the NHS evidence and the survey.

All I wanted was to highlight the issue so more regular non-medical people will fill in the survey and give their opinion. I cannot tell you how to think, or how to fill in the survey.

I want all people to have a choice and not all people will have a choice under opt-out.

All people will have a choice under opt out, they will be ABLE TO OPT OUT. The clue is in the name.

All people have a choice under opt-in, what is the problem?

Because opt in people say they will but never get round to do it

Not enough people opt in and people are dying. You've been told that already.

You're ok with the people dying then, yes?

YABU

Hope management in the Nhs don't catch onto the fact that they could save money in wages and get money if they bump some of us nurses off and donate our organs.

If those people really want to help people they would go and opt in, you can do it when you register at a GP or online.

I would say the fact that people haven't bothered is because it is not something important to them, maybe they don't really want to. Maybe they should have less priority with regard to transplants.

I have opted in. My husband has opted out, he is happy with the idea of having less priority so long as nobody takes his organs after he dies. We have different opinions.

You are talking about presumed consent and how important getting more donors is, but had I not come on here and posted this would you have known about this survey. This article about this survey was placed at the bottom of Google News, I happened upon it by accident. Who was talking about this issue here today? Where is the exposure?

A lot more people at least are now talking about organ transplants today than they were before.

My aim was to increase awareness of this survey which opened today. By posting here I hope more people will fill it out, whatever their opinion. It can only be a good thing, whether you opt-in or opt-out, that your views are heard by the NHS.

To all the people who are accusing me of scaremongering and tabloid sensationalism and that less people will become donors if they read my post. If you wish to encourage more people to opt-in, you could post in a positive light on MN about it and seek to encourage more people. I look forward to reading your thread about it.

If more people did this then maybe you could get the uptake you want, rather than trying to force people into opting out. That is why opt-out has never got through in this country. This is the third time it has been proposed, it has never been adopted as it is too unpopular. If everybody agrees with opt-out then we will soon have it then won't we, as we do live in a democracy.

Your aim was to increase awareness of the survey? So why add in the paranoia, accusations, lies and nonsense?

You want opt in. You have it. You're confident it will stay that way. So why all the fuss?

"All people have a choice under opt-in, what is the problem?"

Reletives get to over rule that decision. The record keeping for those that opt in isn't great, for starters.

People who care opt in.

People who care currently don't opt in but would opt out if the system was changed.

But there is another group. Those who don't give a rat's arse either way.

They don't opt in. Because they don't give a stuff. But equally they don't care if their organs ARE used.

so an opt out system would include all those people. The 'don't cares', the 'get round to it one days', the 'oh yes, they can have mine, have I registered? no' ers, and so on.

Those who don't want to donate can say so. Everyone can be reminded it's an opt out system when they go to see a GP, when they get their driving licence. It could be taught in schools. Hell, it could be a question on the census, or on the voting registration forms. Or all of the above.

And Birds makes an excellent point. If I die tomorrow, I want my organs to be used. I am on the register. It is what I want.

As it stands, my husband could overrule that. And he would. He has been very clear on that. That angers me. It is and should be MY choice.

It should be changed so that relatives cannot refuse to allow what the person wanted.

And that should be changed whether or not we go from an opt in to an opt out.

So how will the record keeping be any different for those that opt-out? Surely that is more important and more worrying.

I agree with Hecate that relatives should not be able to overule.

Zhen

YABU for using the word "harvested", which is emotive and makes me want to throw something.

However, YANBU for linking to the survey & evidence base - very helpful, thank you. Particularly interesting to see the relative rates of donation & size of waiting lists and how they vary from organ to organ.

As for your headline question, I am not sure. If the hospitals were "selling organs" then I think that would be immoral. However, the NHS finances are structured such that they incentivise (by financial payment) the behaviours that they want to encourage in hospitals. So the money available to run the hospital basically depends (in my very limited understanding) not just on what the hospital does but also on whether they do it in the approved manner, etc. In that context, I do not necessarily think that a system which incentivises hospitals financially to look for ways to increase the donation rate in line with agreed national criteria is necessarily immoral. The end result sought is a public good (the prolonging of those lives which can be prolonged, using organs derived from those that cannot), and the methods proposed do not seem to me to be inappropriate. So while I wouldn't say YABU to find the proposal immoral it is not a moral judgement that I come to myself.

One thing I do find immoral is the refusal of family members to honour their deceased relative's wish to be an organ donor. What moral right have they to deny the expressed desire of their loved one?

Harvested and organ harvesting are the terms used by the medical profession. Throw something if you wish.

Is there a "price list" .