TRANSPLANT OF HUMAN ORGANS BILL (Hansard, 6 February 1974)

§ Mr. Tam Dalyell (West Lothian)

I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to facilitate the transplant of human organs. If for the third time in four years I intrude upon the prime time of the House to ask leave to bring in a Ten-Minute Bill on the transplant of human organs, I do so because most of us have experienced harrowing constituency cases, and because some of the specialists concerned believe that about 1,000 young and middle-aged lives could be saved each year in Britain through a change in the law and an amendment to the Human Tissue Act.

In round figures, the facts are that about 15,000 kidney transplants take place annually in the world, and of these at least 75 per cent. are successful if 1222 the criterion of success be good health over a two-year period. Roughly 70 per cent. of all transplant patients are still alive, many of them working, but in Britain the number of transplant operations has increased insignificantly, being some 200-plus now per year.

There are, however, about 2,000 candidates on the priority waiting list for kidney transplant, or at least 10 times the number of transplants last year. Roy Calne, professor of surgery at Addenbrooke's Hospital, tells us that at least 1,000 could be expected to do well if there were the organs available.

Since I last tried to introduce such a measure, two things have happened which have made the situation in Britain very much worse. First, it is now regrettably apparent that the kidney donor card scheme has failed. For my part, although I thought that the Secretary of State was right to try it, alhough some of the surgeons never thought that it was more than gentle propaganda, I suppose that the motions probably had to be gone through. But the unpalatable truth remains that this scheme has failed.

Second, if I may say so, there has been the Secretary of State's own ambivalence in the House on the legal position, which may have been partly responsible for taking the steam out of the kidney donor scheme. If a relative were to complain that organs had been taken from a deceased person with a card, there is, to put it mildly, doubt about the legal position of those involved.

It is not surprising, therefore, that many coroners or fiscals, until they see a change in the law, will just not allow organs such as the kidney to be taken from a corpse until such time as the permission of relatives has been received, and the delay involved in obtaining relatives' permission—even less than an hour after death—may mean that there is irreversible damage to the kidney, so that no recipient could benefit even if permission were obtained.

Hon. Members can readily imagine what it is like for surgeons at an interview. The stunned parents of a son or daughter who has been killed are asked, within an hour of the news coming to them, whether the surgeons may have permission for the organ to be extracted. 1223 This Bill would, in effect, do away with the need, painful for the doctor and painful for the relatives, for such a sensitive personal decision to be made at the moment of maximum grief.

My sponsors and I can well understand that some hon. Members may just shake their heads and say, "In the event of fatal accident, it is obscene to try to get organs from a child or young person". Our reply to that is that it is terrible also to be approached by the parent of a child or young person, or by a young wife or husband, who knows that the child or partner will die if a matching organ cannot be found.

One may ask whether public opinion is ready for the contracting-out scheme which is intrinsic in the Bill. The reply is that in 1969 I did a detailed personal survey, the results of which are in the hands of the Department, which showed that 364 families out of 1,000 would at that time have been prepared to go for a contracting-out scheme. It seems to me that the climate of public opinion is veering towards a contracting-out scheme such as is known in a number of other European countries. Since the MacLennan Committee reported in 1969, public opinion has definitely been in the direction of contracting-out.

Therefore, as the House has other matters to think about, I simply ask leave to introduce the Bill in the hope that, in the event of this Parliament running to July or the autumn, or even into next year, there will be time for debate leading to eventual action on this complex sensitive matter which is of paramount importance to some thousands of families.