Organ donation: 'Transplants remain the only hope for many'

Published on Tuesday 18 November 2008 08:47

BRITAIN has a shortage of organ donors and hundreds of people die each year waiting for transplants.

The whole question of organ donation is a sensitive one. But the plan by Lothians Labour MSP George Foulkes to use his other role as a member of the House of Lords to introduce a Private Member's Bill to bring in an "opt-out" system for organ donations seems entirely sensible, despite the rejection of the idea by the government-appointed task force looking into the issue.

The task force concluded there was insufficient evidence that such a system – where doctors assume the organs of a dead person are available for transplant unless the individual has expressly said otherwise – would mean more organs becoming available.

Instead, both the UK and Scottish Governments want to redouble efforts at increasing the number of voluntary donors. It might reasonably be pointed out this has been tried before and people are still dying on the waiting list. Lord Foulkes' sense of urgency and desire for speedy action is fully justified.

However, the longer term answer is to invest in better alternatives to organ transplants. The shortage of donor organs is not the only problem with transplantation. While there are many stories of patients going on to live long and healthy lives after transplants, there are plenty others where individuals survive only a short time and are plagued by illness. Surgeons, who now face having their performance judged by "death rate" league tables, are increasingly reluctant to perform operations which have a relatively high failure rate.

The difficulties involved were highlighted last week by the sad case of 13-year-old Hannah Jones, who has chosen to die rather than undergo a heart transplant operation because of the risk the anti-rejection drugs she would have to take could lead to a recurrence of her leukaemia.

But alternatives to transplants are being developed, including artificial hearts, which are placed inside the body not to replace a human heart, but to support a severely failing heart until it can recover its normal function.

This kind of technology ought to be given the funding it needs to become part of mainstream treatment.

But until these new methods are fully investigated and developed, organ transplants remain the only hope for many people.

That is why Lord Foulkes is right to pursue the opt-out system to try to ensure patients are given the best chance of life.