Organ Transplants - should you honour the wishes of the deceased?

Tiana . It was the last thing you could do for him, following his wishes as you did.
I've been on the Organ Donor Register for a few years and I carry a card as well. DH hasn't registered and doesn't carry a card, but we've spoken about it, and he would want any/all of his organs donated.

Well done, Tiana, you showed your love by respecting his wishes.

tiana brave lady

My husband knowing there was not a lot of time left to him, obtained a DNR order with instructions to give for transplanting anything that could be used

When the time come, I agreed to his wishes. THIS HELP ME AND HIS FAMILY TO acknowledge THAT IT WAS HIS DIEING WISH.Its not for everyone but for myself it was the last thing I could do for my loving partner.

Your right greatnan

Neatly put.

I think you just have to ask yourself if you would want a transplant for yourself or somebody you loved. If the answer is 'yes', then surely you must be willing to give your own organs or any over which you have control.

If we had the opt out then I wouldnt need to have the fight with myself.

My brother had a feud with my sister and wanted to cut her out of his will and make me the sole heir. When he died, I shared his estate with her, 50/50, because I thought his will was spiteful. I didn't feel any compunction in ignoring his dying wish.

I guess that means I'm largely in favour of an opt out organ donor arrangement such as there is in France (according to Greatnan).

It's one of those questions that is ultimately about the greater good. Yes, you would be betraying the trust of someone who had been alive, but since they are no longer alive they won't know and it will do them no harm. On the other side of the coin, you could help someone who is still alive to stay alive for longer. By refusing an organ you would not exactly be doing harm, but would you be sanctioning harm already in existence that your decision could assist and possibly correct?

If the person who was against organ donation was someone close to me, I might well try to persuade them while they were alive. I might even tell them that I didn't want to be held by such a wish once they were dead. In which case they could get some sort of legal injunction against me, I suppose.

That wouldn't bother me because I would have done my best to make sure what I felt was right happen. If it was prevented from happening by someone else, I might be sorry for it, but I wouldn't be responsible for any wrong (or harm, or lack of help to someone else) that then ensued.

So, unless forbidden by law, I think I would override such a wish.

This does not mean I would necessarily override other wishes. It would depend on the circumstances each time. So I guess I'm saying that I don't think a dead person's wishes need always be followed, and especially not when someone stands to gain from those wishes being ignored.

But I dont think you can go against someones wishes, one side of me wants to say I have to help if I can, but then I would be betraying someones trust.

That was a good question Absent and my initial reaction was the same as Greatnans but now having thought about it I would try and look beyond the wishes of the deceased and focus on the life or lives that could be saved with the organ donation.

Thanks for the links, bags, I had forgotten much of what was said on the earlier threads.

As a result of reading this, I have just added my name to the Register - have always carried a card, but this prompted me to actually fill the form in. Thank you.

Blimey, absent, that is a good question. My instinct is to say the wishes of the deceased should be respected even if the family do not agree with them, but................

What about the other way round? Is it wrong for the next of kin to agree to organ donation knowing that the deceased was against it?

Offensive language, mal, in this thread? I don't remember noticing any.

gracesmum

Or even more to gracesmum!

Respect gracsmum

Admonishment accepted. I could and should have chosen my words more carefully but sometimes a response comes from the heart and not the head.

I see it as simply a misunderstanding. Perhaps we could be sensitive to grace and just drop it?

It might also be useful to look at the guidelines for posting. That might stop some of the offensive language.

You complained elsewhere about multiple threads on the same topic as well. It definitely gave an impression of complaint rather than just a friendly "pointing out" with helpfulness to find the old threads thrown in.

Please do not misunderstand me, gm. If you had put up a link to the thread in which you said what you had to say on this subject that is close to you, it might have helped. As it is, it took a long time for the source of that information to be readily available to people who hadn't seen it before.

The OP would not have been aware of it. In your initial post you could have supplied the link, but didn't. Why?

As it stands, your initial post reads a bit like a ticking off, and I think the OP read it like that, as did I. My comments were aimed at making this point, but clearly did not work.

I really do think it's not a good idea to jump into a new thread saying it's all been said before. It hasn't all been said before by everyone, and you could have linked to or copied and pasted your previous comments and made it easy for people to find it, but you chose merely to complain. I'm afraid I still don't understand why.

Sorry.