For now, people who require a new organ are reliant on those carrying donor cards or on the decision of the closest family of a person about to die.

Next year the Government will put £4.5 million into a campaign to get more people to carry donor cards.

However, reports suggest if this and whatever subsequent campaigns follow should fail, Gordon Brown may change the rules and adopt a policy of presumed consent.

That would give medics the right to remove body parts, unless the deceased had previously indicated otherwise. This moves the goalposts and has created quite a debate.

An organ-donation task force concluded such a move could undermnine trust in the medical profession and put people off making donations.

Twenty years ago today, Alison Waite had a liver transplant without which she would not have lived. She too has strong feelings. "If people are choosing to help, it makes people receiving organs feel less guilty," she says. "It would be lovely if more people carried cards."

There is no doubt more lives would be saved if more donor organs were available.

And while one can sympathise with the Government for looking at the wider picture, using legislation to tackle such a subject is unwise and ill-advised.

There is, after all, the saying: In life one should never presume anything.