KIDNEY DONOR MAYOR AGAINST “PRESUMED CONSENT”

14-01-2008

The former Birmingham Lord Mayor given a kidney by his wife has spoken out against Gordon Brown’s proposal that organs should be taken without permission from dead patients. Councillor Mike Sharpe spoke out after the Prime Minister gave his support to the idea of “presumed consent”.

Sharpe, who’d been the victim of a life-threatening kidney disease for more than 15 years, was on dialysis four times a day when he was elected Mayor in 2006.

Last November, his missus Thelma became a “living donor” and on Saturday - just seven weeks later - Mike was well enough to attend the Single Status rally in Victoria Square.

No one is better placed to appreciate the benefits of organ donation, but he says, “It should be everyone’s choice to have an informed opinion about what they do.

“I know Thelma and I went through a 12 month process and only when we’d gone through all that were we ready. I think you should only be a donor if you’re on a register or if you carry a donor card.

“You might say it’s stressful at the moment for relatives to have to deal with the question of organ donation if someone has died, but I think it would be more stressful to have organs taken without their knowledge”.

Gordon Brown suggested in the Sunday Telegraph, that individuals should have to specifically opt out of organ donation, although he added that families would also have the right of veto (see link here).

A similar system operates in Spain, which is reported to have the highest rate of donors in the world.