§ Mr. DalyellTo ask the Secretary of State for Health if she will bring forward proposals to amend the Human Organ Transplants Act 1989 further to provide for the circumstances in which an organ may be retrieved from a dead person for the purposes of transplant, to require the anonymity of the donor and the recipient, to define death for the purposes of that Act of 1989 as the total and irreversible loss of brain function and for connected purposes.
§ Mr. SackvilleNo. Conditions for the removal of human organs from dead people for transplantation are provided in the Human Tissue Act 1961. The anonymity of the donor and recipient is covered by the common law principle of patient confidentiality which applies to all medical information. The determination of death is a matter for the clinical judgment of doctors. Brain stem death criteria have been accepted by the medical profession as conclusive evidence of death and are already applied for the purposes of organ retrieval.