The remarkable decision of a sufferer from Parkinson’s disease to donate their brain for medical research, reported in the Bridport News this week, raises very important, but very difficult issues.
No-one could do anything other than applaud someone who makes the decision to offer part of their body in the cause of saving others from suffering.
But if this is so good a thing to do, shouldn’t we be encouraging more people to do it?
And, if encouragement is right, should we go one stage further and establish ‘opt-out’ rules that make such donations the norm unless the person concerned has positively left instructions to the contrary?
Part of the reason why these issues provoke so much debate is of course that our bodies are, very obviously, very personal. Strong feelings are evoked. Then, for some, there are deep religious questions. But even for those of us who are not squeamish about our bodies being used by researchers and who don’t have any religious concerns, there are very tricky questions about the relationship between the state and the individual.
Does an ‘opt out’ system somehow imply that the state has a right to our bodies? Or could it evolve into a claim of that kind?
At present, many of us are in any case worried about the increasing intrusions on civil liberties in Britain — 42-day detention, ID cards, the arrest of Damian Green and many other examples spring to mind. Against that background, the thought of any government moving towards the point where our bodies become state property is rather disconcerting.
But what about the living people — and the people about to be born? Don’t they have some claim to be relieved of suffering?
The answer to this question, of course, is yes. It is because living people have a claim to be relieved of suffering that we have the NHS.
The conundrum, here, is like almost all the really difficult conundrums in public policy. It is not a matter of deciding between an obvious good and an obvious bad, but a matter of deciding the balance between two values, both of which are dear to us. We want the government to relieve suffering. But we do not want the government to take control of our bodies.
So the right way to put the question is to ask whether the benefit arising from the increased chance of medical advance through the opt-out system is sufficient to outweigh the increased chance that an opt-out system will start us down the slippery slope towards government asserting control over our bodies.
A few years ago, before the assault on civil liberties began, I would have answered this question firmly in favour of the opt-out. At that time, I would have regarded it as fanciful to suppose that a British government would ever begin to argue for control over our bodies.
But I am afraid that the assault on civil liberties over the last few years has changed my mind. I think we now have to take slippery slope arguments very seriously indeed. So today I would say: let’s celebrate those who choose as a specific and voluntary act to leave their bodies for medical research, but let’s not give any hint (through an opt-out system or otherwise) of a presumption that government has some kind of property in our flesh and bones.