The Transplant Partnership had been really important and the input of the NKF, particularly Tim’s sterling efforts, had been extremely helpful. It had achieved its aim of getting legislation around organ donation. What next?

I think at the very least some of the arguments about how terrible selling organs is do not really stand up. Now the BMA would go no further than to say let’s at least discuss it. The first objection that is raised is of course the one of exploitation the familiar picture is of the first world preying on the third world and grabbing their organs, usually they are not much good. They usually need taking out again when these people get home again adding therefore to the load on the NHS.

The second big argument is that we destroy the concept of altruism, but the concept of a gift is not getting us too many organs at the moment. I think the arguments for a kind of discriminatory sort of economic pressure in this would largely disappear if we were to consider the concept of a regulated market in which there was a price for that organ. A kind of hidden exploitation is a real problem and one that I don’t have an answer for and I don’t think anybody else does because we have not really engaged in the debate.

Maybe the final issue is that we have an obligation to stop people making bad decisions. I find that rather paternalistic! I find it quite offensive for people to tell me that I couldn’t do this because it would be a bad decision.

Please note, this page is a summary of the full conference speech (click here for the full transcript).

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