Consent and nothing but consent? The organ retention scandal

Bibliographic Data

ID2265871
AuthorsValerie M Sheach Leith (0000-0002-5824-8426, Robert Gordon University, corresponding author)
Year2007
Volume29
Issue7
Pages1023-1042
Publication date2007-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSociology of Health & Illness (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0141-9889 • E-ISSN: 1467-9566
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/j.1467-9566.2007.01031.x
PMID18092981
OpenAlexW1563342289
LanguageEN
Citations received9
References cited37

The organ retention scandal arose in the UK in the autumn of 1999 when knowledge of the practice of organ and tissue retention after post-mortem for subsequent diagnostic, teaching, audit and research purposes fully entered the public domain. Many families were shocked and distressed to realise that by allowing a post-mortem on their relative or child they were also deemed to have agreed to the long-term retention of organs and tissues and thus had buried or cremated, as they perceived it, not a 'whole' body but an 'empty shell'. Subsequently, informed consent was placed at the centre of recommendations for reform, now given expression in the Human Tissue Act (2004). Through a discourse analysis of the documentary evidence produced in the wake of the organ retention scandal, I argue that the emphasis on informed consent masks concerns about body wholeness. In addition, whilst informed consent is posited as key in 'balancing' the rights of the individual over the needs of medical science, this position is tempered by the concurrent presence of notions of the gift relationship and post-mortem citizenship. Incorporating these notions alongside the discourse of consent also renders concerns about the commodification of the body less acute

Alternative medicine · Commodification · Epistemology · Informed consent · Nothing · Pathology · Political science · Grief, Bereavement, and Mental Health · Law · Medicine · Organ Donation and Transplantation · Palliative Care and End-of-Life Issues · Psychology

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