Brown backs "presumed consent" organ donor policy

LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister Gordon Brown gave his backing on Sunday to hospitals wanting to adopt a system of "presumed consent" for the removal of organs from dead patients.

A policy of presumed consent allows doctors to remove organs after people die unless they or their families have previously stated they did not wish to be donors.

"A system of this kind seems to have the potential to close the aching gap between the potential benefits of transplant surgery in the UK and the limits imposed by our current system of consent," said Brown, writing in the Sunday Telegraph.

Three years ago the ruling Labour Party ruled out changing the law to allow "presumed consent" for organ donation - a system that the British Medical Association (BMA) has backed to overcome the shortage of organs available for transplant.

Spain has the highest recorded donor rate in the world at 35.1 donors per million population, while Britain's has 14.9 donors per million population, with 1,000 patients a year dying as they wait for an organ in the UK.

On Tuesday ,the government's taskforce on organ donation will release a report calling for every hospital to have a senior doctor acting as a "champion" of donation.

"Often the quality of their dealing with clinical staff is not as good as it should be - the dialogue could be better," England's chief medical officer Sir Liam Donaldson told the Observer.

"Families are being approached when they are in a very distressed condition and, faced with uncertainty, their default position is to refuse consent.

"It does require considerable skill to handle such sensitive situations."

Managing Director of UK Transplant Chris Rudge gave a cautious response to the adoption of a "presumed consent" system.

"It's an issue that needs to be looked at, though I have to say I'm written to by people more often that not that are against it rather than for it," Rudge told the BBC.

"People that have received transplants like to know that the organ has been donated by someone who wanted to take that step

-- that it is an 'active' gift of life -- and a lot of people think the policy should stay as it is."