Press red button, donate kidney
BMJ 2005; 331 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.331.7514.461 (Published 18 August 2005) Cite this as: BMJ 2005;331:461
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EDITOR - Inviting people to add their names to the NHS Organ Donor
Register "by pressing the interactive red button" while watching a TV
programme(1) - and very possibly under the influence of its emotional
content - makes mockery of the principle of fully informed consent.
Of particular concern is the likelihood that those so registering,
like some of those who have done so by trustingly ticking boxes on forms
recording the offer of organs to be taken after death, may be unaware of
the vigorous worldwide debate about the diagnosis of death for transplant
purposes(2).
Those who have registered without fully understanding the state they
will be in, if and when their offer is ever taken up, may be held to have
done so on a false premise. Their consent, so registered, cannot be
considered valid. Their relatives, seeing them rather obviously still
alive when certified "dead on the basis of brain stem testing", may well
feel that they had been deceived.
1. Lyall J. Press red button, donate kidney. BMJ 2005; 331: 461
2. Potts M, Evans DW. Does it matter that organ donors are not dead?
Ethical and policy implications. J Med Ethics 2005; 31: 406-9
David W. Evans (Cambridge)
Competing interests:
None declared
Competing interests: No competing interests
Press red button if you dare
It is degrading and facile to reduce decisions of life and death to
"Press red button, donate kidney" (BMJ 331;461) and to use such
interactive technology so that "viewers will be able to vote on which of
two patients competing for an organ should get it". Anyone responding as
a donor has no chance to be properly informed and need not even be sober.
Vital organs for transplantation must come from living bodies and
there is no explanation for potential donors that death for transplant
purposes is not ordinary death. Increasingly doctors, philosophers and
ethicists are questioning the "dead donor rule" and agreeing that organ
donors are dying but not yet dead, and should be treated accordingly(1).
The perceived need for organs should not treat potential donors with
contempt and drive standards for informed consent to such an abysmally low
level.
Dr David J Hill
(1) Potts M, Evans DW. Does it matter that organ donors are not dead?
J Med Ethics (2005); 31:406-9
Competing interests:
None declared
Competing interests: No competing interests