New Opt Out Organ Donation System comes into effect today

[Al1Langdownthecleghole]

I've just gone on to register my wishes, (link below if anyone else wants to do likewise).

I was concerned that under the new regulations requiring you to opt-out of becoming a transplant donor, it would not be possible to specifically opt-out of donating my reproductive organs.

In fact, if you opt to only donate some of your organs and select the ones you are happy to be used, reproductive organs are not listed as a choice, although "tissue" is, and I do wonder how widely tissue could be interpreted.

For now, I am choosing to opt-out of donating tissue, but would be willing to donate the other organs specifically listed.

Sadly, there is the inevitable question about gender. Even when talking about cadaver transplants, it would seem gender trumps biology.

www.organdonation.nhs.uk/register-your-decision/register-your-details/?

Because it wont often be brought up

I would suggest that it would be best to add the information about opt out to the letter which accompanies every issuing of a national insurance card. Combined with a letter (post Covid) to every household, that should effectively capture the population. This doesn't seem significantly different from opt in, where a person might register when they apply for a driver's license and not think about it for the remainder of their life.

My understanding is that regardless of individuals recording their wishes via the opt-out scheme, family members will still be approached.

I don't believe that's true, the literature from the NHS states:
If you have not recorded a decision either way and you are not in an excluded group, your family will be approached and asked if they have any information about your organ donation decision.

In other words, it helps prevent those who have not formally registered but still object to have their wishes respected. Consent is also gained, where possible, prior to donation and discussing it with family members would help them feel less that they're making a decision of behalf of the deceased and instead communicating their wishes.

I don't think the idea of avoiding talking to people who are grieving is really a good idea anyway.

I think a family should definitely receive support at a difficult time but I disagree that they should be asked at all about donation if a refusal to donate is recorded on the register. I don't even think it should be possible for them to overrule and permit donation (my understanding is that overruling of a refusal is not possible under opt out).

Here in the US we have to have our no heroics do not resuscitate order with the local hospital, our doctor, our wallet, and posted on our refrigerator, and even then the paramedics are likely to do heroics without looking in our wallet.
It is an opt in system here and the pressure is applied to school children at an early age.

Ah, parents will have to opt their children out of the scheme, too. Thanks for the reminder, Lillian

Yes, best not to forget what went on at Alder Hey children's hospital:

In January 2001, the official Alder Hey report (also known as the Redfern Report) was published. A large scale public outcry against the National Health Service resulted when it was revealed that Dutch pathologist Dick van Velzen had systematically ordered the "unethical and illegal stripping of every organ from every child who had had a postmortem" during his time at the hospital. This was ordered even for the children of parents who specifically stated that they did not want a full post-mortem. The report also revealed that over 104,000 organs, body parts and entire bodies of fetuses and still-born babies were stored in 210 NHS facilities. Additionally 480,600 samples of tissue taken from dead patients were also being held. Later that year the General Medical Council (GMC) ruled that van Velzen should be temporarily banned from practising medicine in the UK. Furthermore, it emerged that Birmingham Children's Hospital and Alder Hey Children's Hospital in Liverpool had also given thymus glands, removed from live children during heart surgery, to a pharmaceutical company for research in return for financial donations. Alder Hey also stored without consent 1,500 fetuses that were miscarried, stillborn or aborted : en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alder_Hey_organs_scandal

(Points up)

I really don't understand how anyone can look at that and continue to insist that we can trust the system to act in an ethical way that's respectful of people's wishes.

God Justhadathought I don't think I can have previously registered the scale of the scandal. Or my memory is failing me. Truly shocking and scandalous.

Also. temporarily banned? What would someone have to do to be banned permanently then?

temporarilybanned? What would someone have to do to be banned permanently then

A harold shipman?

You can read the full report here:
www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-royal-liverpool-childrens-inquiry-report

It's a very harrowing read so I wouldn't recommend it if you're not comfortable with reading about the events in detail.

temporarily banned? What would someone have to do to be banned permanently then?

He was temporarily banned prior to a formal hearing, at which he was struck off. The allegations were so serious that they justified suspension prior to a full investigation.

The thing is, that one doctor was struck off, but it seems there must have been quite a lot of other people involved or at least complicit.

And yes, Alder Hey is enough to make me doubt the ethics of the authorities on these matters forever. Astoundingly horrible.

I really don't understand how anyone can look at that and continue to insist that we can trust the system to act in an ethical way that's respectful of people's wishes.

And yes, Alder Hey is enough to make me doubt the ethics of the authorities on these matters forever.

It seems like a paradoxical justification; if Alder Hey were representative then the result would be the same whether the system were opt in or opt out. Personally, if I believed that, I'd probably flee the country.

Really? So if you've never given blood, you shouldn't be able to receive it?

I’m not sure this is the same. I’d bet that lots more people would donate blood if it was made easier (not that it’s particularly hard as is). For example, if they came to your workplace I bet a lot more people would do it on their lunch break.

Organ donation on the other hand doesn’t involve any effort from the living aside from ticking a box once.

Reply to my complaint
"The gender field is not used clinically to indicate the biological sex of the donor...............is used so that we can compare the 'population' on the NHS ODR with the population
as a whole..........helps us to monitor whether any particular group is underrepresented.......target our campaign etc.'
I wrote back asking why then does disability not feature as a question.

I wrote back asking why then does disability not feature as a question.

Because society generally doesn't really care much for the disabled.

Nor women 😖 However, if they are using the targeting of under-represented groups as their excuse you would have thought that they would have had the nous to cover all the bases.

However, if they are using the targeting of under-represented groups as their excuse you would have thought that they would have had the nous to cover all the bases.

They're playing inequality trumps ...

My passing interesting in the debate is how facilities that the disabled have fought for for decades (and in some cases still not got) have been disappeared in the wink of an eye to make way for the bewildering multiplicity of changing rooms the modern world appears to need.

Some establishments managing to bypass the provision of disabled facilities and go straight to gender neutral ones.

It's baby buggies on buses all over again.

Did they ask questions relating to religion? If they want to monitor which groups are on the register that might present some interesting information?