Sheffield – Transplant Scandal (1999)

Barcode (ID): 03B0552480               

Main Search Term and Keywords: Organ Donation, Racism

Date of Broadcast: 7th July 1999
Clip Duration: 3 min 19 seconds

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Usefulness for Teaching Bioethics

Described by the health unions as an ‘absolute disgrace’, this clip illustates the ethics behind organ donation and how one hospital accepted kidneys on the condition that they only went to white people.

Description:
The barrage of criticism over the hospital which accepted kidneys for transplant on the condition that they only went to white people intensified today.

• Northern General Hospital, Sheffield,  behind the racist organ donation retreated behind the inquiry ordered by the health secretary only issued a statement and answered no questions
• Government launched a top-level inquiry into the controversy
• Health secretary Frank Dobson said ‘if new rules were needed to keep racism out of organ transplants, then they would be introduced.’
• Patient said she would refuse a donation labelled ‘white only’
• Kings college London refuses to handle any conditions on the organs
• In donor system, fundamentally based on an altruistic gift from that patient to society as a whole
• Talks about a possible ‘opt out’ option to donation in the UK such as that in Europe
• Shows map whereby this law is in place – whereby patients are automatically donors unless they opt out – however organs are still in shortage
• Believed it would be difficult to introduce in the UK due to our culture and donors are fickle when it comes to bad publicity

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