Nearly a million Britons may have had their organ donation wishes improperly recorded

Saturday, July 03, 2010 by: Ethan A. Huff, staff writer
Tags: organ donors, malpactice, health news

(NaturalNews) According to a recent report, as many as 800,000 Britons may have had their organ donation wishes improperly recorded in the U.K. donor register. Some who expressed that they didn't want to be donors may have been registered as donors, while others may have been registered as being donors of the wrong organs.

When applying for a driver's license, there is typically a space on the application form to specify whether or not one wishes to be an organ donor. Sometimes, there is a space to specify which organs a person wishes to donate, and which ones he does not.

In the U.K., there is a checklist of organs for a person to mark, indicating which organs can be donated and which cannot. But Stephen Banks from Redditch, Worcestershire, recently found out that his donor requests had been improperly recorded in the register.

When filling out his form, Banks specified that he was willing to donate every one of his organs except for his eyes. He marked the appropriate boxes for the other and left the "eyes" box blank. But upon receiving confirmation of his submission, he was shocked to discover that, according to the register, he was willing to donate all of his organs, including his eyes.

"I have to say I am a little angry. How could such a major error occur?" he asked in response to the blunder.

Though somewhat ashamed to admit it, Banks came to the conclusion that the phrase, "the eyes are the key to the soul," rang true with him, and that he didn't want his eyes to be given to another person.

However, after receiving confirmation from the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) thanking Banks for his willingness to donate all his organs, he is not sure what to do.

"I haven't tried contacting them. I feel a bit embarrassed to call up and say: 'I don't want to donate my eyes'. I feel a bit awkward about it," he explained.

Yet he is concerned about the error, and the fact that there was no space on the letter to make any sort of correction to it.

While it may seem like a simple mistake, the fact that hundreds of thousands of other people in the U.K. may have been improperly recorded as well is unacceptable.

An independent review is currently underway to figure out what is going on.

Sources for this story include:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8614058.s...