I have written–and received much flack for so doing–that organ procurement agencies should announce they will not accept organs from suicides. I wrote in reaction to people who committed suicide–apparently in part anyway–to donate organs. My point is to prevent people from believing their deaths are of greater value than their lives, in the hope that it might prevent some suicides. Now, there has been another case of suicide tied with an organ donation request. From the Fox News story:
A Utah woman has committed suicide shortly after telling emergency personnel she wanted her organs harvested.St. George Police Captain Scott Staley says the 57-year-old woman made a call Friday morning to 911 to say she wanted to be an organ donor. Staley says she then parked outside the emergency room at the Dixie Regional Medical Center, left her vehicle and shot herself in the head around noon. Doctors and nurses in the emergency room heard the gunfire and ran outside. They tried to revive her but were unsuccessful.
Did she kill herself solely to donate organs? Almost surely not. Had she known that her act would preclude her from donating, would it have prevented the suicide? We can’t know that. But I think that knowledge might deter some from ending their own lives for whom the lure of organ donation might be the tipping point.
HT: Steve Jensen
July 18th, 2011 | 3:20 am
For the benefit of everyone living in a society, all viable organs should be donated, regardless of the source.
It really is that simple if you want to extend and save lives.
July 18th, 2011 | 10:35 am
“It really is that simple if you want to extend and save lives.”
No, it isn’t that simple, if you think there’s a possibility that not being able to donate their organs might discourage at least some people from committing suicide. THEIR lives are also worth saving.
I’d say it’s hard to know either way, but it’s not “that simple” if the suicide’s life also matters. It at least needs to be considered.
HistoryWriter Reply:
July 18th, 2011 at 7:02 pm
@pentamom,
The point is, the person who commits suicide is dead, so failing to make use of his/her donated organs is simply a colossal waste, especially when it could save other people’s lives. You might feel differently if you were on the waiting list for a liver or kidney. Would you pass a transplant by because you considered it “tainted” by someone’s suicide? Would you pass it by if it came from a drunk who was killed in an auto accident?
HW
HCM Reply:
July 18th, 2011 at 9:11 pm
@HistoryWriter, Exactly. Organs are not a renewable resource (yet). And until they become such, they should be used whenever possible (unless duress/undue influence is present).
Pay the poor? No. Use what’s available? Yes.
pentamom Reply:
July 19th, 2011 at 7:55 pm
@HistoryWriter, So your answer is, essentially, it doesn’t matter if it costs lives that might have been saved by discouraging suicide. The potential suicide’s life is worth less than his liver. At least you’re clear on it.
HistoryWriter Reply:
July 20th, 2011 at 7:27 am
@pentamom,
No, I didn’t say that. What I said is that once a person believes his life is worth less that his liver (his opinion, you understand) and kills himself over it, “suicide prevention” has failed; so why waste a perfectly good liver?
HW
pentamom Reply:
July 20th, 2011 at 8:34 pm
@HistoryWriter, Because to do so undermines further efforts at suicide prevention by giving a positive aspect and a societal imprimatur to suicide. Of course it’s too late for the person who just committed suicide five seconds ago, but what about all the people who might take organ donation as a tipping point incentive, who might otherwise have been within the reach of help? Is the tiny number of viable organs available from suicides really worth the potential cost in future lives of those who really shouldn’t be given another reason to believe that “the world will be better off without them?”
July 18th, 2011 | 10:49 am
HCM – You do realize that, in the process of investigating any violent death or death by misadventure in a way not easily explained, that enough time is bound to elapse that the organs will be ruined. (Not even mentioning all the damage to the body from autopsy and from forensic analysis of most of the major organs.)
Furthermore, most means of killing yourself, or being killed by others, are bound to damage the very organs which one would want to donate! Poison is toxic to the liver. Suffocation causes petechiae in your eyes. It goes on like that. There’s a reason that people won’t eat meat that’s killed in the wrong ways; violent death is accompanied by violent body reactions in most cases.
Organ harvesting is only possible in a widespread way with a very narrow range of deaths. There are others which permit a few organs to be harvested, and a great many which make pretty much everything useless. So if you’re so totally pragmatic, you’ll encourage people not to commit suicide for fear of ruining their organs.
HistoryWriter Reply:
July 18th, 2011 at 7:09 pm
@Maureen,
OK, so he has all the necessary papers signed, witnessed and notarized beforehand. Then he calls the police, tells them he’s going to blow his brains out and that he wants to donate the rest of his organs, and asks them to have a hospital prepare the necessary cooled conveyances. He waits until the first officer crosses his threshold and has him in plain sight (so there’s no doubt as to the cause of death) before pulling the trigger.
That ought to work. Where there’s a will there’s a way.
HW
pentamom Reply:
July 19th, 2011 at 7:56 pm
@HistoryWriter, Lovely, life-affirming scenario, HW, but a police officer is not a medical examiner. The policeman is merely a witness — he’s not able to verify cause of death just because he witnessed the shooting.
HistoryWriter Reply:
July 20th, 2011 at 7:22 am
@pentamom,
When you blow your head off with a shotgun in front of witnesses it’s a fair presumption that the cause of death was a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head (except, perhaps in Missouri, the “show me” state).
Admittedly someone might want to waste an autopsy on verifying the obvious, but there’s no reason the deceased’s organs can’t be used immediately, just as they would be in the case of an accident victim.
HW
pentamom Reply:
July 20th, 2011 at 10:04 am
@HistoryWriter, No reason, except for the law, HW.
I don’t disagree it’s a fair presumption. The reality is that cause of death cannot be established by the testimony of a cop, but needs to be verified by a medical examiner.
It’s not so much a matter of how I feel about the ethics of your scenario, it’s that it doesn’t work the way you think it does — merely having the death witnessed by a cop is not sufficient to get the donation process moving. “Cause of death” is a medical determination, not something that can be testified to by “I saw him shoot himself,” reasonable as that conclusion may be in a “common sense” way.
Now if you could somehow come up with a way to have the ME present on the spot when the gun goes off, your scenario would work, at least on your own terms.
pentamom Reply:
July 20th, 2011 at 10:06 am
@pentamom, I should say, medical examiner or other physician, as is the case with most non-violent deaths. I guess you could work it by having a personal physician hanging around, but very few people are willing to violent commit suicide in the presence of any other person.
pentamom Reply:
July 20th, 2011 at 10:07 am
@pentamom, And I’m not referring to a full autopsy, but merely a medical determination of cause of death, which “I saw him shoot himself” is not sufficient to determine — you need a medically qualified determination.
July 19th, 2011 | 7:18 am
For the benefit of everyone living in a society, all viable organs should be donated, regardless of the source.
Yes, but you’re in favor of people killing themselves anyway, aren’t you?
Resources being scarce and all. Aren’t you the one making the argument that suicide is not incompatible with informed consent?
The question is whether a suicidal person is or can be sound of mind and body. If not, then we have an ethical obligation to not encourage suicide.
(of course, with Obamacare kicking in, anything that reduces the number of people needing care means more resources left over for you, though, doesn’t it? Ahhh nothing like the Left to bring out the best in human nature…unlike those evil right wingers who just don’t care about other people!)
HistoryWriter Reply:
July 20th, 2011 at 7:32 am
@Blake,
Once a person has committed suicide the idea of “suicide prevention” becomes moot in his case.
HW
July 20th, 2011 | 10:55 am
Once a person has committed suicide the idea of “suicide prevention” becomes moot in his case.
Are you ignoring the actual argument or did you just not understand it?
HistoryWriter Reply:
July 21st, 2011 at 8:20 am
@Blake,
You wrote: “The question is whether a suicidal person is or can be sound of mind and body. If not, then we have an ethical obligation to not encourage suicide.”
My point was that once a person has committed suicide the question becomes moot in that case since it would seem obvious that preventive measures failed. All we can do is *assume* that he/she was or was not of sound mind or incapable of informed consent. It has nothing to do with encouraging or discouraging suicide; the fact of the suicide is unquestionable, while the person’s state of mind can only be conjectured.
I strongly doubt that rejecting suicide-related organ donations will discourage anyone from committing suicide. On the contrary, it will serve only to deprive innocent people of the potential benefits of organ donation.
I hope this clarifies my statement.
HW
July 20th, 2011 | 10:55 pm
Well you are all arguing for nothing because once your dead your organs are useless (except skin and eyes) . Organs must be harvested from a live body.Anyone who commits suicide will never be able to donate their organs .
HistoryWriter Reply:
July 21st, 2011 at 8:08 am
@bonnie snaith,
OK, so it’ll be skin and eyes then. It still doesn’t change the argument by the naysayers that NO donations should be allowed.
HW
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact