A data handling error by the British National Health Service may have allowed the removal of organs from thousands of dead bodies without consent.
Britain's transplant authority says it's investigating several hundred thousand organ donor list errors stretching back to about 1999.
The Health Secretary, Andy Burnham, said he deeply regretted the distress caused to bereaved families of people whose organs were removed without consent following a huge blunder affecting the donor register.
He said: "I want to assure the millions of people on the organ donor register that they can have full confidence that only their accurate information will be discussed with their families, and that their wishes will be respected.
''This has clearly not happened in a small number of cases in the past, and I deeply regret the distress caused to the families".
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The National Health Service Blood and Transplant organisation says a proportion of its 14 million organ donor list has been affected by technical errors, meaning some of the choices filled out by donors may have been transposed.
That means, for example, that people who wanted to donate organs such as their lungs or their skin were put down as people who wanted to donate their corneas or heart.
The service stresses that all those on the register were willing donors of one form or another and that no data was lost.
