MINETTE MARRIN is quite right about inefficiency or lack of capacity being a real hindrance to organ donation (Even in death our organs are not for the PM to snatch, Comment, last week). While my 83-year-old father was dying of cancer, he donated his corneas and left his body “to science”.

I received a call from the hospital at 3am to say that my father had died, and that his body had been transported to Oxford (27 miles from our home) so that the corneas could be “harvested” and the body “claimed”. This had to be done immediately “because there are no cold storage facilities in Chipping Norton”.

Fair enough, although we had not been told that the donation meant we could not see the body and pay our last respects.

At 3pm the next day, my 82-year-old mother received a “courtesy call” telling her that because of lack of staff, the corneas had not been harvested. The official informing her “broke protocol” to tell her as well that my father’s body was not suitable for dissection, and suggested that we tried to “reclaim” it. (We are very grateful, because I gather that it could have taken as long as three weeks for us to be informed.) We then spent some hours on the phone, trying to trace my father’s body, before being informed by the central register of donations in Oxford that it was “being held in a storage facility”. We then managed to get an undertaker to collect him and prepare for an unscheduled funeral.

This sorry tale is by no means unique. Our family doctor told us that he tried to discourage patients from donation because of the frequency of such events, and the registrar, when we went to register the death, told us that she regularly had to deal with reissuing certificates for burial because bodies that people believed had been accepted or used were then spat out by the system and dumped on the relatives to cope with.

Elaine Hunt
Witney, Oxfordshire

Serious debate

I found Marrin’s article cruel and heartless. To allege that Gordon Brown wants to “nationalise our private parts” trivialises a life-and-death debate that demands a more sensible and mature approach.

Roger Cornish
Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire

A final gift

There are some religions that forbid organ donation and for them there is a right not to donate. For everybody else, not donating organs is pure selfishness. Those organs are of no further use to the owner so why not give them to someone who desperately needs them, instead of burning or burying them?

George Brink
Hinckley, Leicestershire

Give and take

We belong to a society and have a duty to look after our fellow citizens. If you wouldn’t give your own, what moral right have you to claim a blood transfusion or a donated organ? “No man is an island”.

Chris Daniels
Via e-mail

Best for patients

Arguments against presumed consent pale as soon as one learns of the need for a life-saving kidney or liver. As a physician, I care for some 40 patients with kidney failure, and a better supply of donor organs would improve their lives considerably.

D Joseff
Santa Barbara, California, USA

A transplant war of my own, Rachel Johnson, News Review

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