Mother refused organs from daughter

Laura Ashworth, 21, was unconscious for days after she suffered massive brain damage following a suspected asthma attack.

Her mother Rachel Leake, 39, who has kidney failure, was at her bedside when she died at Bradford Royal Infirmary.

But Ms Ashworth's kidneys were given to strangers despite her personal wish to help her mother.

Ms Ashworth, the mother of a two-year-old girl, was on the NHS Organ Donor Register and had told her mother she would help her if the time came - but this was never formally recorded.

Ms Leake, from Bierley, West Yorkshire, said her daughter would have been upset that she was able to help other people and not her own mother."

Ms Leake has suffered from kidney failure for seven years after developing complications from diabetes.

The Human Tissue Authority (HTA), the body responsible for implementing the consent requirements of the Human Tissue Act 2004, defended its decision to allocate Ms Ashworth's organs to strangers.

Adrian McNeil, chief executive of the HTA, said: "The central principle of matching and allocating organs from the deceased is that they are allocated to the person on the UK Transplant waiting list who is most in need and who is the best match with the donor.

"In line with this central principle, a person cannot choose to whom their organ can be given when they die; nor can their family."