Coleman Jonathan: Human Tissue Bill — Second Reading 
Coleman Jonathan: Human Tissue Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:643;Page:12620] 
Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN (National—Northcote) 
: 
 As has already been well canvassed by my colleague Dr Jackie Blue National will be supporting the Human Tissue Bill. Other speakers before me have laid out quite clearly what the bill is all about so I do not think we need to go over that again. 
One of the things that is disappointing to National members is that the opportunity to establish an organ donor register has been lost. If we look at the bottom line we have a real problem in this country with a lack of organ donors. Last year only 26 donors were available across the whole country to provide organs for those in need. At the same time we have this massive explosion in diseases like diabetes hepatitis B and hepatitis C. Those are all diseases where at the end stages if people are going to survive them they will need transplants of live organs. In the case of renal disease obviously they will need a kidney and in the case of hepatitis they will need a liver. We are faced with the very real situation of a dire shortage of organs and New Zealanders on waiting lists are dying every year because they cannot get the organs that they need. It is an emergency situation. 
The Health Committee found a lot of common ground on this bill. It is fair to say that intellectually it is probably the most challenging bill we have been faced with during our time as a committee. But it also threw up quite a few points for discussion and some points of difference. The chairperson Sue Kedgley touched on the point that there was no evidence to support the establishment of a register. I think members need to consider that there is pretty much no evidence to support a lot of the things that are done in Parliament and decided upon but Governments and political parties vote on those anyway. I think this situation the possibility of creating an organ donor register is one where we could have taken the bull by the horns and done something that has a chance of addressing this problem. It is true that the clear evidence may not be there yet but it is good enough for people in Australia. They have decided that that is where they have to invest their money and invest their effort in dealing with this problem. It is good enough for people in many jurisdictions in the United States. They have established organ donor registers. We really have to do something about this problem. I commend my colleague Dr Jackie Blue for her member’s bill. I think it is a shame that it has not been incorporated as part of this bill and that we could have come away from this debate with something concrete upon which to base future efforts in raising organ donation rates. 
There were other points of contention. Tariana Turia gave a very thoughtful contribution before outlining some of the cultural differences in approaches to tissue and organ donation and those differences are very real. The National Party point of view is that informed consent on the part of the individual has to take primacy and that basically if people make a decision during their lifetime that they want something to happen to their body parts that should not be overruled. I can understand though from the perspective of other cultures that that is not an acceptable position and that we need to have an element of collective decision-making. The problem I see though is that in terms of collective decision-making we may never get the organs that we require for the donors who require them. I think that is something that as a society we have to find some sort of way around because we do need a practical answer to this problem. 
We heard from many submitters during the process who talked of the way their families had found some redemption and gained something positive out of the death of a loved one when they knew that those organs that their loved ones were giving up were going to give other people a chance at life. We are faced with a very real decrease in the numbers of organs available. One of the good things about the decreasing road toll of course is that there is much less needless waste of life on our roads every year. The flip side of that has been that fewer organs are available for transplant from those car crash victims who while unable to continue with their own lives do have healthy organs to offer up. That has had a real impact on the transplant scene. No one is suggesting that we want to see the road toll increase; the reduction has been a very positive thing. But at the same time we need to find ways to meet demands for those organs. It is going to be very very important. 
A key issue that came up during the select committee discussions was the trading of tissue. No one wants to see organs and tissues traded on an open market but there is a very real need for researchers and medical scientists to have access to the tissues they need so that research can be carried out. Once again it is a situation where we have to look at the needs of our whole society. We would not want some of our fine learning institutions around the country to be handicapped because they cannot get access to those tissues and materials that they need. 
 The issue of consent has been touched upon and as members will see in the report from the select committee its members constructed some fairly complex flow diagrams to try to clarify the issue. There is a hierarchy of people available to give consent. Gaining consent is quite a tortuous convoluted path but at the end of the day National believes that if an individual makes a decision about what he or she wants his or her body to be used for after passing on that decision should be respected and no one should be able to overrule that. We think that if we held that point about the primacy of informed consent at the very centre of the tissue donation process it really would protect the rights of the individual and it would also go quite some considerable way to addressing this issue of a shortage of donor organs. 
I want to pay respect to Andy Tookey a member of the public who has been very central to seeing something actually happen with regard to raising awareness of organ donation. He has been the driving force behind trying to establish an organ donation register. I know that he will be very disappointed that his dream has not been realised. He has put a lot of effort into this. He has a little girl who needs an organ. She is a brave little girl; she came before the select committee. It brought home to us as select committee members the real human cost involved in this whole organ shortage issue. I think that we as a society cannot just sit back and do nothing; we have to say that there is a donor problem in New Zealand. It will not just be good enough for people to be registered as donors on their drivers’ licences knowing that someone from their family can come and overrule their wishes and that the destinations people would have wanted for their bodies will not come to pass—that they will not have the opportunity to give up their organs to give someone else the chance of life. Fundamentally I think that is really wrong. 
I had a lot of confidence in Jackie Blue’s bill—that that would go quite some way to addressing the problem. I think if we had had an organ donor register and if it had had sufficient publicity young people in New Zealand would have become educated about what they could do to put something back into society by becoming organ donors. I can tell the House that unless we actually have a supply of organs for donation—unless New Zealanders step up to the plate and say “Yes I am prepared to be a donor.” and unless we are going to respect that and not override people’s wishes to do with their organs as they so desire—we will have increasing numbers of New Zealanders on waiting lists dying of kidney failure and liver failure because they cannot get the organs they want and that would be a tragedy. 
As I say National is supporting this bill. We have some reservations and we would have liked to see it go further but I think this is a good start.