AROUND 1,000 people die each year waiting for organ transplants.

The news that Gordon Brown has thrown his weight behind a move to register everyone automatically as an organ donor unless they opt out has all the hallmarks of a major spin operation.

There is no more fundamental human right than control over our own bodies and what is done to them, both in life and death.

The inescapable implication of a donor opt-out is that we no longer possess such control. The presumption instead is that the state controls our bodies and can do what it likes with them after it declares us to be dead.

Volunteering to donate your organs is one thing. Making it compulsory unless you opt out transforms an act of altruism into state oppression. England's chief medical officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, attempts to defuse public hostility by saying soothingly that opting out would be an inalienable right'.

One the contrary - being forced to opt out of automatic donation destroys our inalienable right to control what happens to us.

Colin Henson, Ullswater, Woodthorpe, York.