Tories around the blogosphere have decided that Andrew Lansley's recent comments about compulsory organ donation means another thing to use against the Labour government.

Only four years ago, Gordon Brown and Alan Johnson voted against assumed consent in organ donations on the basis that there was no public support, they said that there were better ways of increasing donations and that the State should not determine what happens to people's bodies after death. Parliament concluded that to take organs without consent was wrong. It is neither right nor necessary for us to change that view

Tories have therefore been stating that Brown's plans are a "nationalisation" of our bodies, a quite frankly ludicrous claim. Thankfully though, not all Tories are mad as we must remember. The assumption for making this statement against presumed consent, aside from it being more about showing the differences between themselves and labour than ever being about the medical welfare of this nation, is that our bodies are our own and that before anything is done to it we require to give consent. This assumption is patently wrong. The medical profession works on the basis of being able to do what they need to do to someone unless they are informed otherwise. Doctors will give injured people blood transfers unless they are informed that religion prohibits this from happening, and they will work to resuscitate dead patients unless that patient has a legal document to say that they do not wish to be brought back to life.

To take it to a logical extreme I would suggest that those truly believing that organ donation should be "opt-in" only should only take that stance if being able to receive blood transfusions is "opt-in" as well, or perhaps the medical profession should only resuscitate if we've informed them before hand we would quite like to live? The state already takes assumed consent when it comes to our bodies as it is the best way to operate, can you imagine waiting times and death rates if (like with organ donation) 90+% of people wanted a blood transfusion when injured but less than half of those actually got around to stating their consent?

The bottom line is that doctors swear an oath to do no harm, and they should be in a position to do just that. Doing no harm is a very liberal term that not only means not doing harm to an individual, but also not doing anything to harm the future prospects of other patients because of the life an unfortunately deceased persons organs can bring. As such doctors should have the freedom to take what they need to help the more fortunate unless they have been told otherwise, just like it works in every other step of their profession.

I am not able to take these kinds of comments seriously, even their concerns about administrative cock ups are more indicative of cheap shots against the governments recent record on data than the reality of how relatives would be able to safe guard against such error. I honestly can't believe that people that are personally happy with having their organs used to save lives can get so pent up about something as fickle as a permission form. But then as I said above, this "debate" never had anything to do with healthcare.