CHRISTINE COX, a 快猫短视频 reader, writes to me suggesting that
if 鈥渆lective ventilation鈥濃�攁ttaching brain-dead people to respirators to
supply oxygen to their organs for a few extra hours鈥攚as legalised and
widely used, far more organs would be saved for transplant. I asked health
minister Lord Hunt for his view.
Hunt, a former senior hospital administrator,
said that the technique was first used in the late 1980s but was widely
considered controversial and ethically questionable. A report from a working
party of the British Transplantation Society showed that nationally only 3.3 per
cent of organ donations resulted from its use. Consequently, most transplant
units chose not to use the technique, he said. And in 1994 lawyers advised the
Department of Health that it was illegal and not in an unconscious patient鈥檚
best interest. The government has to strike a balance between encouraging people
to become donors and the negative effect that any promotion of elective
ventilation might have on public confidence, said Hunt.
I wonder if ministers overestimate the negative impact that such a policy can
have. The number of people now registered on Britain鈥檚 NHS Organ Donor Register
has risen to 8.7 million, and we want to see this continue to increase.
Supporters of the registration process insist that people are unlikely to
volunteer as donors and then refuse to consent to a technique to prevent their
organs being unusable. I believe that the public would favour options that made
more organs available.
Advertisement
A TEAM at the University of Pennsylvania developed a fuel cell that runs on
natural gas using a copper and cerium oxide catalyst
(快猫短视频, 18 March, p 20).
They reckoned that the fuel cell could be used to power clean
cars, but commentators suggest that millions of homes could soon be able to
replace their gas-fired central heating systems with such a fuel cell to
generate enough electricity to run the home as well as heat it. I asked energy
minister Helen Liddell what her experts at the Department of Trade and Industry
thought about the development.
Liddell replied that the DTI knew of this fuel cell, but work on it was still
at the laboratory stage. Provided technical and commercial challenges can be
overcome, she said, fuel cells offer considerable advantages in terms of greatly
reduced pollutant emissions. A number of fuel cell technologies are now
competing for applications and there are good reasons to believe that the first
major commercial uses would be in the road transport sector using
low-temperature fuel cell technology, such as the proton exchange membrane or
the alkaline fuel cell. The solid oxide fuel cell鈥攁 high-temperature
variety鈥攈as advantages for power generation systems that don鈥檛 have to
move about, but commercialisation is a longer-term prospect. She added that the
DTI would soon be calling for research and development proposals for stationary
and transport applications.
I raised the matter with her again last month to see how far the DTI had gone
with this call for R&D ideas. I was delighted to learn that outline
proposals had been sought and closed on 1 June. Liddell said details can be
found on www.dti.gov.uk/renewable/renew.htm. Although the deadline has
passed, potential proposers are welcome to investigate other options for funding
R&D fuel cell projects by contacting the Programme Manager of the DTI鈥檚
Advanced Fuel Cells Programme, Energy Technology Support Unit, Harwell,
Oxfordshire, OX11 0RA.
