Patients kept alive solely to harvest organs

It is one of a raft of measures contained in controversial proposals from the British Medical Association intended to stop up to 1,000 people a year dying because of the country’s chronic shortage of organs.


A new BMA report also suggests hearts could be taken from newborn babies for the first time and body parts could be used from high -risk donors.

The BMA wants a debate about the use of an ethically contentious practice called “elective ventilation”, in which patients diagnosed as dead – such as those who have suff ered a massive stroke – are kept alive purely to enable organ retrieval.

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