My body is my own

*Posted by Tim on behalf of Dr Crippen*

Imagine you are just back from holiday. There is a knock on the door. A hesitant police officer tells you that two days ago your 19 year old daughter was critically injured. You rush to the hospital but are too late. She is in the operating theatre having her organs harvested by the transplant surgeons. She did not carry a donor card but the law has changed. Qui tacet consentire videtur.  You have to contract out of organ donation.

It has not happened yet, but the ghost of Gordon Brown wrote in the Sunday Telegraph:

“...Mr Brown, who carries a donor card, has made it clear he backs an even more radical revamp of the system, which would lead to donation by "presumed consent". The approach is modelled on that of Spain, which has the highest proportion of organ donors in the world.”

Last week we read:

"Gordon Brown’s new NHS to offer health MOTs.

The tests are to be targeted at middle-aged men and patients vulnerable to disease. Those eligible will be chosen using postcode studies to identify residents in areas with high rates of the conditions."

The NHS does not belong to Gordon Brown nor is it new.

The Daily Telegraph is hardly the traditional mouth piece of the Labour Party. But Gordon Brown wants to address the people upon whom the result of the next general election may hang.  The middle classes. Screening is perceived to be a “good thing” by focus groups. Had Gordon consulted the medical doctors, rather than the spin doctors, he would know that screening is not a universal panacea.

The scariest part of this is the two words: Postcode studies.

More data collection. More private information stored on centralised government computers. Completely confidential, of course, until a civil-servant leaves a DVDs in Starbucks.

The invasion of our privacy continues. The health commissars will give financial inducements to GPs to summon patients whom the government deems to be in need of screening. There will be screening “pathways”. There will be another regiment of nurse-specialists, mindless box-ticking automata, slavishly following their protocols, devoid of original thought. The costs will be huge, the benefits few and the medical profession will become yet more demoralised as they are compelled to provide a charade of heath “care” driven, not by medical need, but by focus groups.

Remember when one frosty Sunday morning Tony Blair glibly announced an increase in health care expenditure? Gordon Brown’s alleged reaction was “you have destroyed my effing budget”.  Now, as prime minister, he too has realised the electoral advantage of making grandiose statements about health care. “Hang the expense, darling, I’m taking my free ride on the back of the NHS.”

Let us introduce rational screening programmes. Let us encourage people to carry donor cards. But my body is my own. Please let me decide if and when I wish it to be screened and if and when I wish to be an organ donor.

I once looked after a delightful old lady who decided to leave her body to medical science. She was hesitant.  She asked whether, if she became ill, she would still get the same treatment as everyone else. It took me a minute to understand her concern, but suddenly it dawned on me. I was able to reassure her that the anatomy departments would not come for her body until she had genuinely finished with it.

Let’s keep it like that, shall we?