Cash incentives and the payment of funeral expenses are two ideas being put forward to encourage people to donate human organs and tissue. The Nuffield Council on Bioethics is asking the public if it is ethical to use financial incentives to increase donations of organs, eggs and sperm. Paying for most types of organs and tissue is illegal in the UK. The public consultation will last 12 weeks and the council's findings will be published in autumn 2011.
We provide our bodies or parts of our bodies for medical research or for the treatment of others in a number of ways and for a variety of reasons. However, there is a shortage of bodily material for many of these purposes in the UK. What should be done about it? The Council has set up a Working Party, chaired by Professor Dame Marilyn Strathern, to explore the ethical issues raised by the provision of bodily material for medical treatment and research. Questions to be considered include: * what motivates people to provide bodily material and what inducements or incentives are appropriate? * what constitutes valid consent? * what future ownership or control people should have over donated materials? * are there ethical limits on how we try to meet demand?
Ask a couple struggling to conceive what they would want most in life and "a child" is the obvious answer. They want something money can't buy, even with all the money in the world. For a couple needing egg or sperm donation this reality might change. Money could buy at least the chance of a child if donors were to be paid, if that's one of the outcomes of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) donation review. Various issues are being reviewed in the HFEA public consultation, but payment of egg and sperm donors is high on the agenda.
When Penny Wark's brother died last year, her family did not hesitate to donate his organs. Despite the trauma, she thinks it was the right decision - but says grieving relatives must be treated with more care.
Patients could be kept alive solely so they can become organ donors, hearts could be retrieved from newborn babies for the first time, and body parts could be taken from high-risk donors as part of an urgent medical and ethical revolution to ease Britain's chronic shortage of organs, doctors' leaders say.
A 21-year-old man has donated a quarter of his liver to a complete stranger in the first UK operation of its kind. Daniel Broadhead, who underwent the four-hour operation in December, says he made the decision on purely altruistic grounds, But this selfless act carries risks - there is a chance of one death in 200 procedures and the long-term effects on donors' health are not fully understood, experts say.
A former pub landlord from West Yorkshire has become the first person in the UK to have a hand transplant. Mark Cahill, who is 51, had been unable to use his right hand after it was affected by gout. Doctors say he is making good progress after an eight-hour operation at Leeds General Infirmary. It is still very early to assess how much control of the hand will be gained - so far he can wiggle his fingers, but has no sense of touch. As well as being a first for the UK, it was also the first time a recipient's hand has been amputated during an operation to attach a donor hand.