You and Yours discussed organ donation and whether the system should be changed so that more organs would be available for donation

Radio 4's You and Yours discussed organ donation and whether the system should be changed so that more organs would be available for donation.They asked "Should everyone be forced to donate their organs?" Personally I'm not in favour of changing the opt-in system to an opt-out.

There were some moving contributions from listeners who had experiences both good and bad in the matter of organ donation. And there was mention of some donated organs being, in effect, wasted on recipients who, for example, continued drinking too much alcohol, like George Best, and damaged the donated organ.

There was no mention of the doctors who waste donated organs. Here is an example I blogged about in 2006: "Michael had had damaged kidneys and had patiently lived on a very low salt diet for years while waiting for a new kidney. Then he was overjoyed at last to receive a new kidney. The doctors in the hospital told him it would now be OK for him to eat an ordinary diet, not salt-restricted. And so while still in the hospital he was given an ordinary diet. At the same time they put him onto steroids. The consequences have been dire. He put on a lot of weight and his new kidney now has impaired function. He said to me that he would never go to a doctor again in his life - that he would rather die than have any further contact with doctors. I believe that there are many damaged people who would rather die than have further contact with doctors...)o:" For details of the harm done by eating salty food while taking steroids, see Steroids Cause Salt Sensitivity.

Latest NHS data-handling cock-up: organ donor records

See this BBC News report, in which we read that "the details of many donors' preferences were accidentally deleted in 1999." But the blunder did not come to light until 2009 when NHS Blood and Transplant wrote to donors, reiterating what they had agreed to donate, and many wrote back saying the information was incorrect.

Proposal that law should be changed with regard to organ donation

Donation of organs 'should be automatic' - Telegraph

Extract:

"People should automatically have their organs removed for transplant after they die unless they opted out while alive, Britain's most senior doctor is expected to say tomorrow in his annual report.

Sir Liam Donaldson, the Chief Medical Officer, is expected to call for a change in the law amid fears that people are dying needlessly due to a shortage of donors.

Latest figures show that more than 7,300 Britons are on the waiting list for a life-saving transplant, a rise of about 30 per cent in the past 10 years.

Britain operates a system where organs can be removed only from people who have joined the donor register or carried a donor card.

Under a new system of presumed consent, which is supported by the British Medical Association, everyone would be treated as an organ donor unless they explicitly opted-out of the scheme while alive."

There wouldn't be all this organ failure if steps were taken to protect people from salt sensitivity by curbing reckless prescribing by doctors: corticosteroids, HRT, tricyclic antidepressants and other drugs which cause sodium and water retention, obesity and multiple organ damage are widely overprescribed, often in high dose, and the hapless victims taking them are usually inadequately monitored, if monitored at all, by doctors who have little or no knowledge of the practical consequences of taking them...)o: - See http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/steroids.html and http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/story.html and http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/ami.html

Lose weight by eating less salt! Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!
How to Lose weight!

See my website http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/.html
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Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

See Sodium in foods and Associated health conditions

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