British PM wants opt-out donor system

BRITAIN'S prime minister called for a debate on overhauling the country's organ donor system, suggesting health authorities should be allowed to remove organs from a dead patient without their explicit consent.

Gordon Brown, writing in The Sunday Telegraph, said more than 1,000 people died each year waiting for an organ transplant in Britain.

He said that moving from the country's current system, where patients must register their desire to give their organs, to an "opt-out" system, where consent was presumed, could save thousands of lives.

"A system of this kind seems to have the potential to close the aching gap between the potential benefits of transplant surgery and the limits imposed by our current system of consent," Brown said. A task force dedicated to the issue of organ donations is to make a series of recommendations this week.

At present, organs may be removed only if the person has made their consent known - for example by carrying a donor card - or with the consent of a family member.

An "opt-out" system would presume consent unless the potential donor had said otherwise. That would make it easier for doctors to approach families, said Tony Calland, of the British Medical Association's medical ethics committee.

Calland said the association supported the opt-out approach.

He pointed to the Spanish system, which Brown said had seen donations reach 35 per million - nearly three times the British rate.

Agencies