'She would have been happy to know that she helped save the lives of others'

Published on Sunday 12 August 2007 00:48

JOSIE Phillips was a bright, happy teenager preparing to go to college when she was killed in a fire at the age of 18.

She and her boyfriend had been asleep in bed when a lit candle started a fatal blaze in her home.

Yesterday, her 60-year-old mother Christine told of her difficult decision to donate her daughter's organs, a move which saved the lives of four strangers.

And she backed Scotland on Sunday's campaign for a change in the law to presumed consent, a move that could dramatically increase the number of organs available for donation and improve the UK's transplant waiting list.

Phillips and her 19-year-old boyfriend, Lawrence Vaughan, were at her home in Inverkeithing, Fife, when the blaze started on December 5, 2004. Vaughan died immediately and Phillips was taken to Queen Margaret Hospital, Dunfermline. She was unconscious when she arrived and it soon became clear she was not going to survive after massive smoke inhalation.

Doctors approached her mother about the possibility of organ donation in the intensive care unit. Although these were the worst hours of her life, she says she had no qualms about agreeing to donate her daughter's organs because she knew the teenager would have wanted to help others.

Her kidneys, liver, corneas and a heart valve were all in good condition.

Christine said: "I think it is so good that she was able to help so many people and she would have been happy to know that she did. She carried a donor card, although I did not know this until after her death, so it is what she would have wanted. She was such a bubbly girl and was about to go to college to study beauty and hairdressing.

"It was so nice to hear that the transplants had been a success and it was so good to get the letter and card from one of the recipients."

Although Phillips will never know the identities of the patients who received them, she knows her daughter helped save the lives of four people. She has since received a letter of thanks and a Christmas card from one patient who revealed he had been on dialysis for 15 years before receiving one of her daughter's kidneys. He described the donation as "the kiss of life".

Josie Phillips' heart valve went to a 15-year-old boy and her liver went to a 47-year-old woman. Two men in their 30s received her kidneys, one of whom also received her pancreas. Her corneas are awaiting a suitable match.

Her mother, who is divorced and has four other grown-up children, said she backed Scotland on Sunday's campaign for a change in the law to presumed consent. "I think it would be a good idea because of the lack of donors and the fact that the waiting list for transplants is rising."

Such a move would mean everyone is considered a potential donor unless they make a specific objection during their lifetime.

Experts believe this could dramatically increase the number of organ donors because transplantation rates in some countries where it has been introduced are far higher than those in the UK.

Last week there were 7,338 patients on the waiting list for donor organs. More than 400 people die every year in the UK while waiting for a kidney, lung, heart or liver transplant, and many more die before they even get onto the transplant list.

New rules aimed at strengthening donation were introduced last year, but they have failed to increase donor numbers because they still give relatives the right to refuse, even if the deceased had signed the organ donor register.

England's Chief Medical Officer Sir Liam Donaldson supports the move, but the Scottish government is reluctant to consider it.

Ethics expert backs calls for transplants opt-out

SCOTLAND on Sunday's campaign for a change in the law to an opt-out system to increase organ donation has gathered momentum.

The ethics expert who examined the issue of organ removal at post-mortem following an organ retention scandal across the UK in the 1980s and early 1990s said the time had not been right then to recommend introducing presumed consent, but that had now changed.

Sheila McLean, director of the Institute of Law and Ethics in Medicine at Glasgow University and chair of the Committee of Inquiry into Retention of Organs at Post-Mortem, called for the introduction of an opt-out system where organs could be taken even if relatives object.

She said this was the only way to increase the number of transplants to meet the UK's waiting lists and was only possible if there were more NHS facilities to cope with the huge increase in organs it would trigger.

McLean said: "It's difficult to resist supporting an opt-out system if you can use the organs that would become available. However, if relatives are given a veto it seems to me to negate some of the benefits. We know that 40% of relatives will refuse. So the wishes of the deceased need to be the priority.

"The Executive have said that there is not enough public support for the move, but I don't know where they got that information from. It now requires a full public consultation.

"However, if we were to get a massive increase in the number of organs available we would also need to have more transplantation staff and intensive care beds."