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.

Yes, but thats not what OP is banging on about. The views of the public are not valid when deciding if you are dead or not. Just the doctors are. And its not a grey area.

OP is scaremongering dressed up as concern. It's a load of bullshit.

I know PVS is not brain stem death, my point is once they convince you to switch off the life support, you are dead then they can take your organs if you or your next of kin agree. Whether you could have survived or not.

The point is are we really given enough information about donation, organ retrieval, diagnosis of death to make an informed decision?

Again who is going to protect the vulnerable people who would have opted-out if they could if this system comes in?

On top of that, yes we should put funds towards organ donation/transplant, but to give more funds to ICU's to keep alive patients who might actually just want to die (intact or not), in order to facilitate organ donation when we already do not have enough ICU beds for people who might actually survive seems to me to be a step in the wrong direction and open to corruption. Especially in the face of increased privatisation drives in the NHS, just look at the situation with organ donation in the US here.

Put the funds into getting people to opt-in as others have suggested and deal with the reasons behind the rise in need for organ transplants. That would surely reduce the waiting list.

Do you really imagine that someone who is does not have Mental Capacity will have their organs taken if they have not opted out?

Seriously?

More scaremongering.

If they are going to do that - convince you to switch off life support even if you can survive - just to get their hands on your organs,
does that mean they will not bother to treat you at all if you go in with dreadful injuries?

So they can nick your organs to save someone else's life?

That makes about as much sense as your OP.

Well the information is out there is people care to look

www.organdonation.nhs.uk/ukt/default.asp

''If they are going to do that - convince you to switch off life support even if you can survive - just to get their hands on your organs,
does that mean they will not bother to treat you at all if you go in with dreadful injuries?''

Oh yes MrsDeVere all while forgetting that even with a perfect match lots of things with the transplant can still go wrong

No, no, no. You are talking utter rubbish, still.

There is so much misinformation and scare mongering on this thread it should be deleted!

So to take all your examples of 'brain dead' people recovering in turn:

1. Was written by someone who says: "Even as I prayed that night, I asked Father God where was Suzanne? He answered that she was with Him. I then asked whether she would be coming back. He said yes! I asked when but there was no answer. I then asked for a sign by Wednesday as I had scheduled to return to Singapore that afternoon".

1. Its the Daily Mail

1. All it says is that the initial clinical opinion was that the patient

appeared to be brain dead. He subsequently wasnt tested for brain death because he didnt even meet the criteria to be tested. They did some other tests and it was clear he wasnt brain dead. Surely that doesnt prove any of your points at all?

1. That wasnt in the UK as far as I can tell. The Dr states that he has only read the 'facts' in the media. Even if they are correct, the point of that case is surely that the criteria for brain death werent properly undertaken, that was why they got it wrong and that is what the author of the article is saying.

1. Not the UK so who knows what criteria were used or actually even if they were just mis-reported. Most importantly people who are brain dead arent taken home to 'take their last breath' in their own bed. Brain dead people cant take any breaths never mind their last so I think that article is questionable at the very least.

1. An article on what appears to be a quite bonkers website which makes it clear it is opposed to organ donation. He urges us to "Please pray that our Creator Almighty God will forgive us for taking so many innocent lives under the guise of ?organ donation?. Pray that all people will repent of their sins and turn back to Him and walk in His ways and keep His moral laws." Oh and he has a degree in Land Economy so is clearly an expert.....

1. This newspaper article seems to be confusing you regarding taking someone off a ventilator and a diagnosis of brain death. She clearly didnt stop breathing when they took her off the ventilator (otherwise she would have died). If she had been tested for brain death, this would have been evident, so presumably she wasnt even tested.

Follyfoot you deserve a medal (but will have to make do with these ) for having the patience for managing to get through all the nonsense the OP linked.
It's too close to home for me, I couldn't have faced it.

"I know PVS is not brain stem death, my point is once they convince you to switch off the life support, you are dead then they can take your organs if you or your next of kin agree. Whether you could have survived or not."

[head desk]

We only take organs from doners who are on the doner register and with NOK consent. We DON'T take organs from people who 'could have survived' You have to be diagnosed as BRAIN DEAD and you WON'T survive. What part of that don't you understand? As for the use of ITU beds, you are in ITU untill the diagnosis, if donation is consented to then it happens quite quickly, if not then they die in ITU, they don't wake up, they don't recover brain function, they don't survive.

Another question for those that have knowledge on this subject!

If they don't have consent to harvest organs, and they switch the ventilator off, then the person is still technically alive right up until their heart stops beating right? Because I thought I read that the heart can continue to beat for a few minutes after the machine has been switched off.

So if they don't switch the ventilator off until organs have been taken when they do have consent, does that mean that the person isn't technically dead until after? Even if they are brain dead, their body still isn't dead?

I'm confused about this part, and that is one of the reasons I feel reluctant to have an opt out system.

With my bil he was taken off life support then it took 30 mins for him to die then they restarted the life support to take his organs.

We continue life support untill the heart and lungs are removed then the ventilator is switched off.

Sorry that should say the ventilator is switched off just before the heart and lungs are removed.

Yes Outraged, it does mean that. The diagnosis that allows them to proceed to organ donation is only brain stem death, the body is kept alive by the ventilator, the heart continues to pump.

Brain stem death diagnosis in the U.K is based on the premise that irreversible and complete loss of brain stem function is sufficient of itself to result in the irreversible capacity to breathe and the capacity for consciousness. The guidance in the US and Australia is concerned with whole brain death.

The UK medical profession decided that the concept was clearly defined in a study performed in the 1980s. This looked at patients who had been diagnosed as brainstem-dead but who had not had organs removed. The trial considered 1,300 patients, all of whom died within a relatively short period of time, usually a few days, from loss of cardiovascular function (Pallis, 1987). This demonstrates that the cardiovascular system can function for a time without the control of the brainstem but this is limited and regulation eventually fails. source. I would add to this that some patients live for weeks not days once a diagnosis of brain-stem death is given.

'Brainstem death' has been incorrectly used to describe severe brain injury with a poor prognosis, often without brainstem tests being performed, and is often used to justify the withdrawal of treatment to relatives according Sundin-Huard and Fahy, 2004).

Interesting reading here.

Oh lordy, its a link to another piece of work quoting David Hill rattling on about nurses who filled in the operating register and what time death was recorded. The fact that 'death' was recorded some time after the donor patient entered theatre apparently means that the patient died as a result of the operation. The inference being that the staff killed the patient I assume, by subjecting them to the surgery. As I've turned a donor's ventilator off in theatre, I assume he would think (if he is still alive, he must be ancient now) that I am a murderer. How strange he never said a word to any of us at the time.

Thanks for answering.

I really think the organ donation service needs to do more educating, and if they want to increase donor numbers, they need to simply ask more people rather than presuming consent. I have read the NHS website on the subject, but I don't thnk it does a very good job at answering all the questions that can arise.

Oh and PVS patients are not brain stem dead yet we are removing life support from them in certain cases, so no you do not have to be brain stem dead in order for donation to go ahead as if you were a registered donor with PVS and you had your life support removed then donation could go ahead after life support was removed.

So, given that there are no financial incentives in place, why do you think all these doctors and nurses are taking organs from people i.e. killing them, so they can put them into other people i.e. saving them?

I mean whats the point?

Why dont they save the poorly ones with the working organs and let the poorly ones with duff ones die?

Wouldnt that be cheaper and a lot less trouble all round?

AND
if they are getting away with it with people in a PVS why dont they do it with other very sick people?
Could they be pretending to their relatives that they are treating them whilst all the time waiting for them to be weak enough to whip out their kidneys.

Why only pick on those in PVS?

If there was more information out there you would know that organs taken from a donor who still has blood flowing/heart beating and oxygen in it is much more likely to work immediately(and be undamaged) and tbh if a relative is going to have to go through this I think it is only respectful that the organ donated is given the very best chance of being successfully transplanted. Organs from cadaver donors sometimes take longer to start functioning and are more prone to rejection. This method gives a similar chance as with a live related donor.Seriously from day one at Med School it is all about preserving life

I'm probably paranoid, but I wonder if there isn't more detailed information available, especially on the NHS website, because they think that will put people off.

Asking people at doctors surgeries seems like such a simple idea, there has to be some reason why they don't do it.

After life support is removed...yes WHEN YOU ARE DEAD. What about that do you not get? They aren't coming off life support to get the organs, its just a good byproduct.

And no, brainstem death is not just guessed at, or diagnosed without extensive testing. You're scaremongering again.

What is your objective here? Seems to me that its for more people to die on waiting lists for transplant. You must be so proud of yourself.

Why are you bringing PVS into it?