Like Al Jahom, I take exception to the vile Grant Shapps hectoring us on organ donation. Once again we see the usual tired clichés being rolled out. Now if we choose not to give away our body parts, this, too, will be as “unacceptable as drink-driving”. Shapps wants to nudge us with intrusive questioning when we apply for various documents such as a driving licence in order to create a cultural shift.
What these maleficent creatures seem to forget is that it is not their role to create cultural shifts. They are there to represent us, not hector us nor to change our behaviour. That is none of their damned business.
Grant Shapps, the Cabinet Office minister, wants to nudge ten million more people to join the organ donor register in the next two years through “in-your-face” questions.
Yes, well, my response will be an in-your-face reply, you obnoxious busybody. I will not answer in your face questions and what I decide happens to my bits when I am dead will be up to me to decide, not you, not the state and,frankly, given this increased level of nagging, I am disinclined to donate at all. Just because the technology exists, it doesn’t follow that we have any obligation to donate. Donation is a gift, freely given, not levered out of us using guilt tripping. My reaction to any attempt to guilt trip me is to dig my heels in. No, I will not be putting my name on the organ donation register – and Grant Shapps’ latest little campaign and attempts to nudge me have made damned sure of it.
If anything is guaranteed to make the British Public dig their heels in, it’s this…
Quite. The process should be to ask nicely and leave it at that. There is no such thing as “not enough”. Those who give, give. Those who don’t don’t. No one else’s business.
I too am sick of the nannying from these bozos but I must admit I’m less annoyed about this than most of their nannying. Basically because organ donation is an altruistic act intended to help other people – and I am generally in favour of people helping one another. It’s a somewhat different situation than the usual telling me how to run my private life or how I should feel good about their pissing away my money and freedoms.
All of which is true. However, it is none of the state’s or politicians’ business and they have no place trying to manipulate us. For if someone has been manipulated, it ceases to be an altruistic act.
I would like to donate Grant Shapps’ organs, now, whilst he’s still alive, preferably without anaesthetic.
I have an accessory nipple- the government is welcome to it. It chaffs something awful when I go for a run.
An accessory nipple? Milliband is an entire tit so it can’t be from you. Someone else out there has donated previously.
There is significant risk in too much of this hectoring. Too intense “In your face questions” to give away the last vestige of what is yours may well be met with a spontaneous “In your face” knuckle sandwich donation.
I carried a donor card for years in my purse in case of my sudden, unexpected demise, until all the anti-smoking zealots got a hold on the medical industry. Then I thought to myself that, with smoking rates falling and the number of non-smokers thus rising, the chances would be that any of my useful organs would probably go to a non-smoker. That wouldn’t be a problem but by default (being as it seems to be largely inevitable – with a few very rare exceptions – that ex-smokers morph into anti-smokers eventually), there was an ever-increasing chance that they’d go to prolong the life of an anti-smoker. What a terrible thought! Somebody who would probably be rejoicing in my death rubbing salt into the wound by prolonging their own hateful, meaningless existence! Well, I couldn’t take that chance, could I? And, despite the fact that smoker’s organs (yes, including lungs) are regularly deemed safe for transplant by all those doctors who’ve been telling us for years that they’ve all been ruined by smoking (work the logic of that out, if you will!), I thought I’d take them at their word for once and assume that I wouldn’t have anything worth “harvesting.” I tore up my donor card and won’t be bothering to get another one. And if they go for the “in unless you opt out” option, then I’ll be opting out. Sorry, all you non-smokers out there who might be a “match” for me and who might need a clean, sparkly new liver or a perfectly-working new kidney or two, but you’ve been snookered by the anti-smokers in your midst and in the medical profession!
Why do they want us on their infernal “donor register”? Well it’s so they can allocate our organs according to their own priorities. We have already seen them commandeer the organs of a tragic young accident victim who joined their register because her mother suffered from kidney disease. The mother was denied one of her own daughter’s kidneys because “it’s not our policy”. The mother died shortly afterwards.
Leave a letter of instructions with your next of kin, that stipulates your conditions.