JenniGee

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/bradford/7344205.stm

Unbelievable that according to the system, you can't help your own family members, but your organs will go to whoever is highest on the list, regardless of how they got there...

So theoretically, some anonymous alcoholic with liver failure, or a life-long smoker who needs a heart, will get your organs if their medical need is judged to be greater than that of your own mother, who has kidney failure through no fault of her own....

I'm not in a position to judge medical need, but somehow, this feels very wrong

And has kind of made me think again about organ donation...

NikiL

OH has just said he is of the same opinion as you Jen as far as reviewing his opinion on organ donation as a direct result of this situation. The problem in this particular case (apparently) was that she hadn't started going through the formal living donation route. Still seems utterly appalling that a womans dying wish has been completely ignored :curse:

Personally I always used to be very pro organ donation until I started to learn about where recipients take on their donors characteristics. There have been cases of a woman who had an organ from a climber - she always had vertigo & post transplant took up climbing. There's the classic case of a girl in Aus who's blood group changed after a liver donation, people who's taste in food changed to that of the donor, taste in literature etc changed, and a horrible case where a little girl who received a heart started having nightmares about being murdered - she had received the heart from a murdered child

I am currently still on the register (but having a personal dilemma about whether I should be, especially after this situation), but as it stands I would not be prepared to receive a donated organ. I freely admit that it is an easy thing to say while not in need of a donor organ, but it would require a serious overhaul of my personal ethics. It just seems totally unnatural and the dippy hippy in me has a rather major problem with it. The hypocrisy in me comes in where I have no problem with anyone else receiving organs (Cystic Fibrosis patients spring to mind as an obvious), incliding my own, but not me as a recipient.

I appreciate that this is a very emotive subject, and one that people are likely to have strong views on, so well aware I'm likely to be shouted down or at!

Fly Away

On a practical level, the law is the way it is, to stop people bumping off their nearest and dearest for their organs....

I know 2 people who have received donor organs, (one of them twice as the first rejected) and they have reported no personality changes or inherited memories. I'm not saying this doesn't happen, but it obviously doesn't happen in every case.

NikiL

I know its not in every case by any stretch, and I obviously wish any recipient the absolute very best with their new organ (particularly your friend who had the rejection - that has to be a nightmare bar none). Its just that I couldn't personally be a recipient.

Totally understand about the law being the way it is - but when its someones dying wish when they're dying from an asthma attack, Christ to deny that...............

The law is there to be challenged, as seen by various precedents and if there was ever a case to set a precedent this was one.

Fly Away

It's a hard one because any person with compassion would grant the wish. You are quite right, the law should be amended to accomodate certain situations. I do wonder if it has not been amended because there is no time in individual cases to do so? To be honest, I know nothing about the law in these matters.

I can quite understand why you wouldn't want to receive an organ. not even sure how I feel about it myself and hope I never have to find out for real.

My friend is fine now. He had his first transplant when he was 20 - which rejected and he waited another 5 years on dialysis for a second transplant which has 'taken'. 15 years later and he is now married with 2 children and has a 'normal' life.

The other person I know is the father of a friend who had a transplant 20 years ago when he was 55 and is still going strong - climbing mountains, sailing boats and skiing - all things he did before the transplant.

NikiL

I think the problem is that bureaucracy doesn't do compassion.....it needs the legal challenge to provide the precedent to prevent this happening in the future. Trouble is, the only people who can do this are the people who are (understandably) the least likely to do so as they are in the process of grieving. Horrible situation, absolutely horrible.

Very glad to hear both people you've known are doing well though (to put it mildly from the sound of it )

bridie

Friend of mine's mum had new kidneys..... she had never smoked in her life but after the transplant started smoking... very odd, almost x-file like!!!

Dorothy

What next? Who gets the blood you donate to the Red Cross? When you sign the organ donation card you are donating your organs to a pool of people who need them, not who you pick and choose. I'm sure that if you needed a heart or lungs, or corneas, etc, you would hope the parts were available to you.

Gems

I cant believe this.
My eldest had a kidney removed when he was 9months old. So I would give him mine in a shot, should he have needed it. (He is healthy with one kidney though)

So Im quite shocked to read that if I died and he needed a kidney it would probably go to someone else on the list. Not likely to happen but if his remaining deteriated I would want him to have mine.

Im for donation, but feel most people would want to give to their nearest and dearest if they were in need.

Donors are needed urgently, but this story may put people off in the future.

Gems

asher

Once I'm dead my organs go to the person who is most likely to die the soonest and who is the closest match to my organs!

If we all do this then there is no shortage of organs so no problem.

I would rather take on someone elses characteristics than die!

WelshSarah

Not if you made a living will.

people who say they wouldnt want to accept strangers organs obviously dont need thm.

i would take the case in question with a LARGE pinch of salt... if her daughter wanted to give her mum a kidney then wheels would have been in motion so to speak (IMHO!)

My uncle had a heart transplant more than a decade ago and is still the miserable ole 'B' he was before and a very dear friend of ours has a Cystic Fibrosis child so we have a pretty good idea of the pain etc this subject causes...

ME

I would give my parent, child, hubby any bit of me they needed... as soon as they needed it..

And would also accept ( very very gratefully) the same offer from a strangers family..

And ( god forbid ) would offer any part of me or mie to whoever needed it at the time...

( although how much good my liver is would be open to debate!!

JenniGee

Hi Dorothy

I think with blood it's a different issue. Most people who donate do so regularly, it doesn't have that air of finality about it. Also, blood is used for a different purpose at times, to assist a patient in an operation, for plasma donation & so on. Yes it can be life saving, but more often than not, it isn't in the same ballpark as those unfortunate people who need organ donation.

I used to give blood regularly & never gave a thought about where it was going, so long as it did good for someone. However, if I was thinking about giving my organs, that would be an entirely different prospect & yes, I would want to feel some kind of assurance that the recipient wouldn't do what George Best did & deprive someone else who would have cared about the fact they had been given another chance at life.

But I think this story is more about the rights of someone who wanted to help their mother under circumstances that could never have been foreseen. That her last wishes were ignored because of "the system" seems wrong to me.

bridie

i had an idea about how to increase the number of organ donors: make it so that if you dont agree to donate you wont get anything should you require it - simple

Pollyana

I think a lot of Brits in Aus, judging by previous threads, would welcome the chance to donate blood, regardless of who its going to.

JenniGee

Hi Pollyana

So Brits aren't allowed to donate once they're in Oz? Why not?

For what it's worth, I'm not allowed to donate any more because I received a transfusion many years back, before they had effective screening for CJD. Theoretically, I could either go nuts myself, or pass it onto someone else. An interesting dilemma