Who owns your body when you die?

Easy. Your next of kin.

How do we know that for sure? Well, it is the next of kin who pays for the burial, usually with funds from the estate which they inherit.

John Dixon on "A Radical Writes" raises this issue - thanks to him. John puts forward the argument (without endorsing it fully) that because you are dead when you body becomes, er, a dead body, then you cease to own it and have any conscious thoughts or ownership pertaining to the disposal of that body. Yes (but your wishes are expressed over post-death matters for things you own in a will - are we going to ignore all wills if it suits us in future?).

But what the government's advisers seem to be saying - no, they are saying - is that the state will own your body in future and have the right to take organs from it, regardless of what your next of kin say - if you haven't signed a form to be on a register, saying that you don't want to donate your organs. (The Sunday Telegraph splashes this issue as its main story today).

That is wrong. The next of kin owns the body and therefore should have the right, fully considering their deceased relative's wishes (it may be that they didn't get round to signing a form but did say that they didn't want their organs donated), to refuse to allow organ donation.

If the government is saying that, effectively, they own all dead bodies and can decide to take organs out of them (unless there remains a signed form on the register from the deceased saying otherwise) then, come on, Mr Brown, you can pay for all the burials in the country. If you think you own the bodies, you bury the things!

Obviously that final offer to the government is not going to be taken up, so the government should butt out of this one and not presume that they own all dead bodies.

I went through all these arguments when some insane judge originally raised this idea a few months ago on Today. The main issue is actually getting the rate of organ card carrying up - in the UK it is half the rate in Holland - so let's have more advertising about it and more discussion between the medical profession and families about the subject. Allowing the state to own dead bodies, an illiberal measure, is not the answer.

Here's what I wrote about this in July:

Making organ donation after death an "opt-out" rather than an "opt-in" procedure is practised in many countries. Stephen Pound MP made a very sound case for it last night on Radio Four's PM. But it is fundamentally illiberal. It means that the state owns your body upon death and can remove organs from it. The idea that someone may be too embarrassed or too busy to fill out an exemption form, then die, then their relatives see their body "carted off" by the state, is disgusting.

Britain has one of the highest family refusal rates for organ donation of 47%. A presumed consent system is an insufferably blunt instrument to override that current "spur of the moment/after the death of a loved one" resistance. But:

John Oliver, of UK Transplant, the organisation that oversees organ donation, said: “Britain’s high relative refusal rate is the single biggest barrier to more lives being saved. Four out of ten people identified as suitable donors do not go on to donate because their relatives refuse. One of the main reasons is because the family, at a traumatic time, say they have never discussed it.”

Perhaps we have some work to do, to break down the taboo here before introducing draconian measures?

And don't go round waving the shrouds of 1,000 people a year to get this through chaps! My son died and we would have loved to have given his organs, but none of the medical staff brought it up. (When we brought it up I seem to remember it was explained that organ donation wasn't possible due to the need for a post-mortem, which is a shame because it didn't need a genius to work out that my son had died from Meningitis.) There should be more asking about organ donation by medical staff and more encouragement of discussion amongst families before death.

I've been there holding a loved one's dead body - actually giving their organs strikes you as a wonderful way of making some sense of their death. But if you've never discussed it with the deceased I suspect you don't want to presume what they would have said on the subject.

Only 25% of people carry a donor card in this country. The rate is 44% in Holland, which suggests there is great scope for improving our card carrying rate without bullying. More asking and more advertising, more pushing and more discussion of the card system is needed, not an illiberal and repellent practice.

And its nothing to do with religion! Opt-out organ donation is immoral.

PS. I have carried an organ donation card for seven years. But then, I am an anorak and take care over these things.