Comment - should organ donors get free funerals?
Following the debate this week over whether the NHS should pay for the funerals of people who have donated their organs, (see: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-15242675), Steven Tapper, Joint Managing Director at Tapper Funeral Service, said providing a free funeral would seem a ‘reasonable way to say thank you’.
“The priority though should be the opportunity to save the lives of a number of seriously ill people and the moral question of whether financial gain is appropriate (for the deceased’s family) secondary,” he said.
“While people die waiting for an organ that would have saved their lives and yet others are buried or cremated with those same organs intact, a benevolent society has some difficult questions to answer. I am reminded of when the late Christopher Reeves spoke to Congress in America in the debate about stem cell research. His argument that critics needed to sit where he was sitting before taking the moral high-ground was so powerful.
“It is also worth considering that a number of families facing the decision of whether to donate organs (by the nature of the usually sudden manner of the death) will also be facing financial hardship in the immediate future due to the sudden death of their relative.”