Posted on 04/14/2013 6:28:31 PM PDT by Morgana
I have been warning for several years that many in bioethics and the organ transplant community hope to legalize killing for organs, that is, taking organs from the living. The latest example comes in the Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics by Canadian philosophy professor (of course!) Walter Glannon.
It’s a long article and I don’t have space here to deal with every aspect. But a few points: First, he claims that all decisions about organ donation and the treatment of patients are kept strictly segregated. From, “The Moral Insignificance of Death in Organ Donation:”
All transplant policies and protocols require that decisions about withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment be separated from decisions about organ donation,procurement, and transplantation. This prevents a conflict of duty for critical care teams, whose primary duty is to provide appropriate care to critically ill patients,as well as for transplant teams, whose primary duty is to patients with organ failure who need a transplant. Separating these decisions and duties minimizes the risk of compromising the care of critically ill patients and prevents treating them instrumentally as nothing more than a source of transplantable organs.
I thought that was true, too. But as I posted about yesterday, the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network permits discussion of organ donation to occur before the decision to withdraw life support.
Glannon claims that death is morally insignificant in procuring organs.
Many will emphasize that organ procurement before a declaration of death would be killing. But organ procurement causing death is not necessarily harmful to an organ donor. A donor may be beyond experiential harm before the permanent cessation of all brain or circulatory functions if he or she lacks the neurological and psychological capacity to be harmed. Moreover, donors may be the subject of nonexperiential harm if ischemia [organ decay] defeats their interest in donating their organs…
What matters is not that the donor is or is not dead, or when death is declared, but that the donor or a surrogate consents, that the donor has an irreversible condition with no hope of meaningful recovery, that procurement does not cause the donor to experience pain and suffering, and that the donor’s intention is realized in a successful transplant. These conditions are consistent with the principles of respect for patient autonomy and physician nonmaleficence. None of these conditions requires that donors be dead before organ procurement can proceed.
A lot of water can flow under the “meaningful recovery” bridge.” And as Glannon writes, the pain free part can be accomplished through anesthesia.
I wish Glannon were a lone wolf in this kind of thinking. Alas, as I have written elsewhere, such articles are becoming ubiquitous. But here’s the thing: I can’t think of a better way to undermine public support for organ transplant medicine than to permit killing for organs. Not only is this kind of advocacy foolhardy, but it would have the transplant community break solemn public policy promises made to gain support from a public wary of the entire enterprise.
Nazi bastards!
Now that we have established that the feral government owns your body, they can simply take your organs if they think that there is someone more worthy of having them.
She was right: Death Panels.
and now we know a significant minority of folks who are anesthatized really aren’t unconscious, but awake and immobilized. these people will hear these butchers discussing them like a cut of meat, and feel everything as their doctors kill them.
What happens if you carry an donor card?
There have been numerous scifi short stories on the subject.
One that comes to mind has a guy getting the death penalty, and surrendering his organs, for his third speeding ticket.
Heck, look at China's death penalty use in procuring organs.
“..look at China’s death penalty use in procuring organs.”
Who knew that deciding to be a Falun Gong follower was subjecting oneself to a death penalty. Ain’t Communism great? We’ll learn soon enough under our dipstick-in-chief.
Well, they are claiming that they own the kids, guess they own us too.
A liberal will always try to jump the gun to gain an advantage for himself even though he also favors government control of guns. So beware of donating your organs if you think you might still be alive when the harvester comes calling.
If you donate your organs you will be alive when it happens.
Once you die the organs are no good.
This is why my wife and I are no longer donors. I do not trust the medical profession any more.
It was always obvious, to me, that this is type of predation is what transplants would lead to. Just say NO - on your driver’s license, in your will, tell your spouse, children, doctor that in the event of a catastrophe, not one single cell can be ”harvested” from your body.
Don’t.
This is exactly why I’ve always been vehemently against the. Lining of humans. It’s not below the modern human condition to warehouse cloned people for harvesting tissue, vital organs, etc. No assurance in the world about laws preventing this would be sufficient.
People are like cars. The parts are worth more than the whole.
A friend of mine lost his brother last week. From his understanding, organs like eyeballs were removed sans anesthesia while he was alive (and comatose). They cut all they could without killing him and then took the rest of the parts after he was removed from life support.
Ghouls for profit.
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