[hocndoc]

I not only have the organ donor box checked on my driver's license, my very detailed Advanced Directive specifies that none of my cells may be used in any sort of cloning, nuclear transfer or reproductive effort. And, I ask not to be given hydration or nutrition if I can't respond (actually, I wrote that I'd want any artificial support, feeding tube or IV withheld or removed if I can't read, argue, and interact -- to please let me go to Heaven). However, that's a very personal decision, based on my belief that I have the right to refuse intervention --- not that anyone else has the right to refuse to make that decision for me -- and my security in what is waiting after I die.

The author of this proposal is attempting to redirect the brain-death discussion from a priority of determination of irreversible brain stem death (which is inevitably followed by cessation of adequate heart beat).

No medical professional should allow the philosophy to be perverted from recognizing natural death to an opportunity for organ harvesting.

[MarMema]

The two authors of this proposal are pediatric specialists with offices in or near the pedi ICU at Boston Childrens. One is a pedi anesthesiologist, and the other a pedi pulmonologist.

They are proposing that brain damaged and ill children in the ICU be used for organ harvesting without dying first.
What they must mean is the killing of children who are seriously ill in order to harvest their organs successfully, because the children are likely to die soon anyway.