Presumed Consent

There was much discussion in the media yesterday about whether the government would or should change the legislation on organ donations, so that there would be ‘presumed consent’: it would be assumed that everyone was happy for their organs to be transplanted after their death into people who needed them; and you’d have to opt out of this by explicitly stating that you didn’t want this to be done.

Of course, what was not to the fore of the media discussions was the fact that the issue related to England only. The media, as usual, failed to make this clear. The BBC news website story compares Gordon Brown’s approach with the lines taken in Scotland and Wales – so, reading between the lines, you can work out that the story relates to England only – but it doesn’t spell that out; and it’s placed in the ‘UK’ news section of the site, rather than the England section.

I must admit I was rather angry when I heard that GB [Gordon Brown] wasn’t ruling out introducing presumed consent legislation (to England) despite the recommendation of the expert committee. Typical prime ministerial arrogance; plus, as a Scottish-elected MP, he has no right to impose this on England, whatever you think of the whys and wherefores of the issue. This contrasts with the approach taken in Scotland, in fact, where they’ve concentrated on a public-information campaign, which has significantly increased the number of donors coming forward. They’re initially going to try this approach in England, too, apparently; but GB has rather pre-empted the outcome by his posturing on the subject today: the clunking fist getting things done. Well, I feel like saying ‘p*** off back to Scotland, Gordon; and let the English decide for themselves on this issue’.

In fact, if you wanted to really push the boat out on this one, you could say presumed consent – even in the absence of actual, positive consent – is a metaphor for how the UK government presumes that English people consent to all the legislation (including all the civil liberties-infringing laws) that is enacted on their behalf by a UK parliament that is neither a legitimate nor representative parliament for England in most of what it does. Never mind what the experts say; nor what English people may or may not think about it: Scottish-elected PM Gordon Brown may impose it on us (but not his own constituents) anyway. Arrogant b*****d!

As for the merits of the issue itself, I’m against presumed consent because it could end up overriding the feelings of bereaved family members and friends, particularly in cases where there hasn’t been time to discuss the issue with the dying person – e.g. in cases of sudden illness or accidental death. It’s really the feelings of the family that are most important; once you’re dead, you won’t mind what happens to your body, whether you regard death as a simple annihilation of all life and consciousness, or as the start of the new life of salvation. Besides which, I personally believe that human bodies are sacred, whether alive or dead; and they’re the property ultimately of God, not the state. Therefore, they should be treated with reverence and not as an automatic spare-parts warehouse; and the family’s act of surrendering their departed loved-ones’ organs should also be respected as a reverential, sacrificial gift of life to another person made possible by the death of their family member. This makes it truly Christ-like in a manner that I think must be pleasing to the Almighty – but how should I know?

In short, the government’s presumption to be able to use dead (English) citizens’ bodies in this way is another example of its de-sacralising of human lives and bodies, similar (but at the other end of life) to its presumption that it’s OK to experiment on human embryos and combine them with animal DNA for the advancement of science; and to abort foetuses whose existence is too distressing or inconvenient for their parents. At least they’re more honest in these latter instances, in that they’re not pretending to obtain any consent on the part of the (British) human beings they abuse and destroy in this way.