I have been warning about this for years: Here’s the game that is afoot. Some among the same sector that once assured a nervous culture that vital organs are only procured from the truly dead, are now saying it was a ruse all along. Understand, this isn’t an ethical call to pull back from harvesting the organs from the supposedly alive, but rather, to expand the categories of patients who can be harvested to those who are uncontroversially alive.
The latest example for doing away with what is known as the “dead donor rule” comes out of a paper in the American Journal of Bioethics, as reported in Canada’s National Post. From the story:
They advocate replacing the current “dead-donor rule” with a policy that educates the public about the true nature of patients used in transplant, obtains informed consent — and ensures the donor does not suffer during the organ harvesting. Doctors should abandon the “dangerously misleading” policy of having to declare donors dead before their organs can be extracted for transplant, and adopt a more honest policy that acknowledges some patients may still be technically alive, Canadian and Spanish experts suggest in a provocative new commentary. “Because there is a general assumption that dead individuals cannot be harmed, veneration of the dead-donor rule is dangerously misleading,” they wrote. “Ultimately, what is important for the protection and respect of potential donors is not to have a death certificate signed, but rather to be certain they are beyond suffering and to guarantee that their autonomy is respected.”
This isn’t a new concept–and for those who are paying attention to the arguments that occur in the professional literature and at symposia–it is hardly shocking. The organ shortage has for years caused some to push for treating human beings as if we can be considered mere natural resources. Some call the push “redefining death,” to make it a sociological construct rather than a biological understanding. In this view, a diagnoses of persistent vegetative state would constitute death–even though wrong 40% of the time. Others, as these advocates, more candidly propose doing away with the need to be dead altogether, wanting to focus on consent, which would permit many categories of living patients to be killed for organs–perhaps even (although these advocates don’t say it, but others have) in conjunction with suicides or executions.
All of this raises an obvious question: If they the organ transplant community) were lying to us before about dead being dead, why should we trust them? Indeed, if they are right, we are morally and ethically obliged to stop organ harvesting of those who remain among the living, not the other way around.
But I don’t think they are right. I still believe that properly diagnosed and with proper protocols, the current system is ethical And indeed, there is some saluatory pushback against this very bad proposal:
Some experts call the proposal a theoretical argument that has little foundation in reality, but that could seriously hurt the ongoing struggle to recruit potential organ donors. “In the overwhelming majority of cases, the concept of death is easy, obvious and not really subject to any complex interpretation. It’s very clear,” said Dr. Andrew Baker, medical director of the Trillium Gift of Life Network, which oversees Ontario’s transplant system. “They’re dead, you can see it, there is no return of anything
Killing for organs and providing interventions for the still-living patientst that aren’t therapeutic–but merely intended to preserve organs–treats human beings as so many corn crops ripe for the harvest. Not only does that violate the essential tenets of human exceptionalism, but will utterly decimate the public’s trust in organ donation. Indeed, pass this proposal into law and that sound you hear will be people tearing up their organ donor cards.
November 7th, 2011 | 2:18 pm
Tore mine up a long time ago. Read Larry Niven’s science fiction stories, especially the novel “A Gift From Earth,” to see the logical end of human organs being regarded as public resources.
November 7th, 2011 | 3:18 pm
Wesley! I’ve just read all of this stuff and as a Canadian, “IT” kind of scares me a little.
I hear ya! Relax Victor cause sinner vic told me that you’re already dead and the world didn’t have the heart to tell you so in your case “IT” probably won’t hurt a bit!
You think?
Peace :)
November 7th, 2011 | 3:49 pm
FYI, Wesley, Wales is going to presumed consent. It’s some kind of “soft” presumed consent where they still ask the relatives. I don’t get that. If you blog about it, maybe you can clarify. E.g. What if you don’t have relatives?
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
November 7th, 2011 at 7:23 pm
Lydia: Don’t ask logical questions!
November 9th, 2011 | 5:06 pm
“Some call the push “redefining death,” to make it a sociological construct rather than a biological understanding.”
No one seems to question the assumption that sociological constructs are less real then biological understanding, let alone realize that the concept of sociological constructs is a sociological construct.
November 9th, 2011 | 6:31 pm
Within the last year, the Pope has asked one of the Vatican’s Institutes or Councils to look more deeply into this. He said that there was a growing consensus that people were not really “dead” when organs were being taken.
This could change the position that the Church takes on organ donation. Personally, I’ve decided that if I needed organs, I would not automatically take a ‘donated’ organ. However, I am still listed as an organ donor, and will not change that until the Church speaks out on it.
November 12th, 2011 | 12:26 pm
Ugh – I wish I had not gone online this morning! Too late, have to comment.
“California is [was] signing up new organ donors with its online Donate Life Registry at the rate of [sigh, only] 1.5 million a year. There are 34 million adults in CA, thus [it would have taken] 20 years to sign up all. [So] With PC and the stroke of a pen, everyone is signed up immediately except for those who opt out.” http://fairfoundation.org/organdonation/contact_congress-Presumed_Consent.htm
And just look at the institutions endorsing it. Looks like all the hESC research folks that are taking billions from the California taxpayer. And as if that is not enough, now they are getting their “tissue” – read oocytes – from all the females, preborn to early thirties (?) that are killed every day. How presumptuous (pun on) of them!
Ladies – at this point in our culture it is NOT an altruistic act to donate. Opt out until there are strict laws that exclude any tissue, organ, gamete, oocyte etc. etc. – any ___ that can be used to create another a life (or clump of cells that represent a distinct, new, heretofore not genetically existing clump of cells…)
AND the opt-out is an online registry. You really think they are going to abide by that. Maybe “opt-out” will be our new tattoo rage in California!
Also see:
28 FORDHAM URB. L.J. 815 (2000-2001)
New Body Snatchers: Analyzing the Effect of Presumed Consent Organ Donation Laws on Privacy, Autonomy, and Liberty, The; Liddy, Maryellen
And the one most difficult for me to talk about – all the grieving parents of just-deceased (well, heart still beating) children that are in the depths of grief and are convinced to donate their child’s organs and tissues (tissues being in the small print, like they could even read the large print through their tears and profound shock and grief) and that will soon find out their dead daughter not only “gave life” to another child needing a heart, and oh! another that needed a kidney, but now – wow did she give life – new life – (and we thought she was a virgin, it must have been an immaculate conception) to hundreds of children/embryos! Ah – we should’ve had her on the pill.
Oops – no, dear daughter was not having sex, it was a bunch of greedy (mainly) men at state-sanctioned and state and VC funded institutions mixing strangers sperm with her eggs. Ugly iddinit? Gruesome and satanic.
People, meet the new, true, feminists. We have Our Blessed Mother on our side – we just need a voice louder than these obnoxious, old “feminists” (there is nothing feminine about them) that are generally husbandless and childless, bitter, (despite their “success”) and ugly and hateful on the inside. So sad.
No eggs for breakfast for me today.
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