Taking a Life to Save an Organ

On March 26, 25-year-old Noelia Castillo Ramos was put to death by the Spanish government. She had not committed any crime. In fact, she was the victim of a horrendous one.

In 2022, Ramos was sexually assaulted by a group of men, which compounded her existing mental struggles and led to at least two suicide attempts. One of the attempts left her with permanent injury and constant pain. Eventually, she appealed to die by euthanasia, which had been legalized in Spain in 2021.

For two years, her parents tried to save her with the help of a Christian law group. In the end, the government and medical authorities determined her life not worth living. One of her friends was even prevented from saying goodbye to Ramos out of fear that she’d convince her to change her mind and want to live.

Authorities had reason to fear that outcome. According to one of her lawyers, Ms. Ramos had sought a 6-month extension, but her request was denied. “The hospital pressured for euthanasia because her organs were already committed.”

Her story includes almost everything that is wrong with the “death with dignity” movement. She was the victim of a crime but was punished. She needed help but was instead helped to die. Her wishes to live longer were denied under the guise of saving lives. The state preempted her parents and friends. In the end, she was killed for her organs. And that’s just part of the story.

Back in 1978, Michael Crichton, author of Jurassic Park, directed a TV movie called “Coma.” It starred Michael Douglass as a young medical student who discovered that otherwise healthy young people were slipping into comas because a group of doctors hoped to harvest their organs. It was an early example of just how prophetic Hollywood art can be.

For example, in a recent New York Times op-ed, a group of doctors called for an “expanded definition of death” so that more organs could be harvested. In response, a UK whistleblower offered the following description of what that would actually mean:

You cannot take organs from a cadaver. The best organ donors have a beating heart, a circulation, under 30 years old and ideally on a ventilator. Basically, someone is being murdered to give someone else organs. The entire brain-dead scenario is a lie.  

Ethical scenarios like this were unthinkable until quite recently in human history. Just a few decades ago, a broken or diseased organ was a death sentence. Then, in 1967, doctors pulled off the first successful heart transplant. Since then, thousands of lives have been saved through organ transplantation and donation. 

And yet, this groundbreaking medical innovation has become a crisis. The ability to transplant organs has become a shortage of organs. Because there are more people who can be saved, we are told they must be saved even if that means some people should die. 

This kind of moral reductionism of human beings is both degrading and dangerous. As Wesley J. Smith said at National Review in response to the New York Times piece: 

We must not yield to the utilitarian temptation in health care. Pretending that a patient is dead does not make him deceased. This proposal—and others like it—have the awful potential to seriously corrode trust in the ethics of transplant medicine among an already wary public. 

The “utilitarian temptation” is the misguided notion that the end justifies the means. Obviously, the Bible is silent on organ donation, but it rejects pragmatic approaches to moral decisions, especially when it comes to human dignity and essential moral values.

In the biblical view, humans cannot be reduced to mere bodies, nor can bodies be reduced to disposable and unimportant flesh.  In his book, Bioethics: A Primer for Christians, Gilbert Meilaender called this “the sort of slippery slope on which we stand if we permit ourselves to believe that ours is the godlike responsibility of bringing good out of every human tragedy.”

And this means that for Christians today, struggling through the difficult ethical questions surrounding the meaning of death and organ donation is not optional. To paraphrase C.S. Lewis, good ethics are necessary if for no other reason than bad ethics exist. And of course, many of us will need to make decisions for ourselves and loved ones in the context of confusion and suffering. At the very least, Christians who believe in the God who makes dead people alive, should be the first to push back on playing god with life and death.

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I post this whenever a story like this pops up, because I feel a moral obligation to do so.

Don’t kid yourself: Euthanasia is “legal” in America if you’re not careful, and with the tacit approval (if not support) of the medical-industrial complex.

A good friend's father was hospitalized a few years ago with a heart attack and hooked up to machines. The attending doctor didn't think the old man would make it.

My friend, respecting Dad's wishes to not be on machines, signed a paper approving the de-machining and putting the Dad on "comfort care" which (IN GENERAL) is basically no curative care.

That was ok - that was the Dad's wishes.

The old man pulled through, but the hospital refused to put Dad back on fluids or nutrition because - you guessed it - "comfort care" IN THAT HOSPITAL and for THAT DOCTOR is effectively Terri Schaivo-style starvation and dehydration.

They said - and if you follow the link you’ll see concurrence from other ghouls - food and water was a medical treatment and thus "curative" and AGAINST the rules of "comfort care."

My friend was stunned. And the attending and her team wouldn't budge - ”you signed the document giving consent.”

For the next few days, my friend and siblings heard from scores of nurses etc that withholding fluids was effectively "the right thing to do"....very Terri Schaivo-like. They also threw in “Dad live a good long life” and “he will never come back the way he was.”

It took a virtual miracle whereby a different doctor intervened, said the father clearly wasn't terminal, and put the old man back on nutrition and fluids.

While my friend's Dad passed away peacefully in his sleep a few weeks later, it was on the Dad’s terms.

It’s also worth noting that the siblings were split on “comfort care.” There WAS a view that it was ok for Dad to dehydrate to death. Someone even said that dehydration is painless; I heard the total opposite during the Schaivo murder.

Euthanasia is, technically, illegal. And I know many people would be OK if fluids were withheld when it is THEIR time to go. Fair enough.

But euthanasia can be made legal - in America - if you're not careful with the Fine Print or vetting the "mercy killing" mindset of the attending.

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