Our clunking Prime Minister. once again not having thought the matter through, is all for stripping corpses of their organs without having prior consent.   Apart from the moral arrogance of demanding that the State has absolute right to the citizen's body, there is no adequate infra-structure to either take the organs from the unwilling dead or to receive them by recipients in terms of theatre staff, surgeons, intensive-care wards and the NHS is paring down the treatments it can afford viz its refusal to fund life saving drugs for cancer patients.

This is another back of an envelope wheeze from a desperate and failing government.  It was first proposed by the latest in a run of thoroughly bad Labour Health Secretaries, Alan Johnson, who, last Septemeber announced that he was set to push through the equally poor Chief Medical Officer's proposal that your body in practice belongs to the State from the moment of death.  That being so, said Johnson, the government, through the NHS, has the right to "harvest" (note the choice of word) any organs it chooses from it.  In effect what the Secretary of State is proposing is that your body and my body and your Aunt Jane's will be nationalised to do with as it wishes in true Stalinist fashion.  Even the dead will not be respected by Labour.

To "make sure" that it is what "the people" want, the Health Secretary is to "consult" and we all know what this Labour government means by that word.  It simply means it will ask a gaggle of supportive friends who are sure to come up with the right answer.  Then it will proudly implement its proposals. (By January 2008 there had been no trace of any consultation yet the Prime Minister added his "weight" to the scheme - and was promptly opposed by the Patients' Association)

Rest in Peace will become but a hollow memory.

But what about the BMA in all this?

The BMA is increasingly seeing itself as a campaigning organisation on even vaguely health-related issues.  On this occasion is is adopting an arrogantly politically correct stance over organ donation.  A stance, which were it to be extended to other facets of our lives could see the inconvenient in our society, the mentally ill, the senile, the terminally ill and others and others incapable of reasoned speech "put down" because, as they say in BMA News August 18 2007, "it would be assumed that someone wanted to be a donor unless they had specifically opted out".

In place of wanted to be a donor susbtitute "wanted to be put down".

Of course, in today's society that would be totally unacceptable - but what about tomorrow's?   Just because someone had not got around to indicating to some official organisation in writing, no doubt in triplicate and signed by a Justice of the Peace or government minister to make it as difficult as possible, it should not be assumed that they would wish for personal euthanasia.

Yet, by extension,, that is what the BMA is doing by joining up with a Labour politician and others to demand opt-out of organ donation rather than opt-in.   The Labour politician in question, Lord Foulkes who is also a Member of the Scottish Parliament, showing typical Labour arrogance pronounced, "What we have been hearing, especially from the Scottish Executive, is that the public isn't ready for the change.  That's wrong and I want to show it's wrong"

What breathtaking arrogance.  

Tough luck, Georgie  boy.

Your own democratically elected, devolved Executive says the public don't want organ opt-out.   They don't want the State to requisition the bodies of their loved ones - or their own - the minute their last breath leaves them - or before.

But what about the BMA in all this?    Should it be joining politicians in this?  Indeed, should it be campaigning at all?   

On both counts, I think it should not.   However, it is buoyed up by its success over the tobacco issue.  Another case where the BMA should have kept its nose out other than to simply educate.   

The BMA is, or should be, primarily the doctors' trade union but, being a body of learned men and women, specialists in their own fields, it has a Scientific Body.   Over the last score years or so these people are seeing their purpose as being not just to educate the public on purely medical matters but as the dictators of the public on these subjects, none of which are its damned business.

In addition to banning smoking in public places, who would have thought that the BMA would directly cause the formation of a secret police of plain clothes local authority narks empowered to heavily fine those who don't follow the State's directions on smoking.   Narks who infiltrate local pubs and restaurants.   Was it really necessary to have such an undercover force able to impose such enormous fines?  A £2000 fine for a pub owner if a smoker is found in his premises?   Even in the Blair/Brown Britain that's heavy-handed and severe.   

Was it really necessary?  Of course not, but I don't hear the BMA protesting against that aspect of their anti-smoking campaign,.  All I hear are loud self-congratulatory noises.  I must assume that with their stuffed-up self-importance the BMA agrees with narkism.

I speak here as a non-smoking, doctor who was a Member of the BMA Council for 16 years, until last year and I believe that the Association should reign in those of their over-enthusiastic members who self-importantly let their enthusiasms run away with them over their own specialist subject.   I believe the BMA should recall that it is not a health dictatorship but primarily a trade union with a useful purpose as an educator.

The more it campaigns over an ever increasing number of subjects, the less likely it is to be taken seriously.   I already hear mumbles of "Not the BMA again".

To set out just a few of the subjects the BMA has added its majestic voice against.   It has demanded restrictions or changes to boxing, smoking and organ donation, but, for some reason it has yet to trumpet in equal measure against alcohol or drugs or even other dangerous sports than boxing.

Returning to organ donation, it would be more appropriate if the BMA - and others - determined the reason why there is a shortage of organs for transplant and then do something about that.   It is not appropriate, indeed it is positively dangerous, for them to assume that they can requisition organs or anything else without written permission from the donor.   That way lies tyranny.

The tyranny that exists in China where condemned prisoners are executed for their organs which are then extracted for sale on the lucrative international transplant market.   The next stage could be to accuse and find awkward dissenters guilty for the sake of their organs.

The BMA could be inadvertently taking the first step down this very precipitous slope.

For what it's worth, my advice to Dr Hamish Meldrum, BMA Council Chairman, is to keep the BMA out of this and to leave it to the politicians.      To do otherwise is to tarnish the BMA's name and be guilty by association.

Don't do it!

And my advice to readers is that they should not let either the BMA or the State get their hands on their bodies, so OPT OUT - if you get the chance.    Better still, object to the proposed legislation and do it NOW.

(18/8/07) addition (13/1/08)