19 February 2000

Mr Alan Millburn
Minister of Health
Department of Health
Richmond House
79 Whitehall
LONDON
SW1A 2NS

Dear Mr Millburn

Consent to Organ removal

Thank you for you for not responding to my letter dated 4 December 2000.

This time I am writing regarding your comments about consent and organ removal.

When there was all the media attention on removing organs from dead people you said about the law being changed that it will not be allowed in the future. Towards the end of the interviews you then added on to the end about asking consent from relatives of the dead.

When are you going to change the law to protect the living? My reproductive and sexual organs as I have stated before were taken without my consent. I withdrew consent verbally, yet I woke up castrated and barren with no medical reason that has been justified and there is medical evidence for!

People have been campaigning for many years to get the law changed however every politician as avoided it! When are you going to start caring about the living and their organs? I and many others are now forced to endure this exsistance with every one of our sexual organs either stolen, mutilated or damaged in some way. You go and watch a hysterectomy on a person that has not given consent, wanted children or more children and who amazingly enough wanted to continue with a quality of a sex life and keep their partner. Then try enduring a year with them as they try to find out answers, do not sleep at night, cannot bear to go out, as amongst other things there are expectant mothers and so on.

These are/were strong women that had productive working lives, paying tax and now even though they were over 18 did not have the right to choice what happened to their bodies and are treated so badly by practically everyone in the medical profession that they come into contact with! By being forced to pay NI we actually paid the wages of these people that mutilated our bodies and effectively stole our organ/s and destroyed our lives.

In my case this operation that I did not consent to, was even done in the wrong year as I have been refused benefit due to problems with contributions.

I also hear rumours that the NHS will move to only cover certain people. As I was given the operation that I did not want, I certainly hope that any further operations (highly likely) and medication that I will require will be covered by the NHS. At present we have to pay for surrogacy, which is stupid, you paid doctors to steal my organs they/you should be paying to put right all that you can.

I am very annoyed at an announcement that you recently made. You have called an inquiry into the death of five babies. Why are those five babies more important than the thousands of children that people like me have been prevented from having? Thousands of peiople over the years have been effectively castrated without consent and often with out reason and you sit by and do nothing. Are we expendable? Would you sit by and allow it if you were castrated in these circumstances or your wife or a female that you care about and they had not completed their family? We will leave aside the detrimental effects for a moment.

Your government often complains that the NHS does not have enough money. I’d like to make a simple suggestion. Home births and virginal births are cheaper than caesareans. So make the doctors stop performing unnecessary caesareans. This would then stop complications following caesareans. Save money. This would stop unnecessary and unwanted hysterectomies. Save money. Most hysterectomized persons have to have follow up surgery as it is detrimental to our heath so costs there would also be cut. As you refuse to put an end to unnecessary operations and trauma to women stop complain about lack of finances.

In the letter you sent, postpartum haemorrhage was used as a cause for 18 hysterectomies. Why were these not investigated? I understand that there is a 100% effective procedure to stop pph without resorting to hysterectomy. It was not of course used in my case. However pph was only one of the excuses we have been given for my castration.

In some hospitals, their hysterectomy rate is about 2 – 3 a decade. The hospital we were in, it is 2 – 3 a YEAR. Why are you turning a blind eye to it? Why are we being violated?

In the pregnancy book there is no mention of hysterectomies and there is no support groups for us. Could you send me details of how to have our support group put into the book for other people in our position?

The NHS employed doctors that we were expected to and did trust. This trust was violated. How can you employ doctors that cannot control a little bleeding, or understand non-consent, not even the consultant? Could you please send details of how the NHS now assists us with having the rest of my family?

Thank you for your time taken in this matter.

Yours sincerely

(Home page www.a-little-wish.co.uk)
Your feedback is very important to us. To be added to our guest book e-mail alittlewish_AS@hotmail.com