[BykrBayb]

Yep. A kidney here, a lampshade there. A piece of your liver, or your disabled child's bone marrow. As long as the price is right, some people just avoid working out any possible moral details. Just do it!

[hedgetrimmer]

Morally, only one of a pair of vital organs or a part of a vital organ may be transplanted. This may be done only as an act of charity after the donor has been fully informed and when the excision of the vital organ or part of the vital organ will not cause death or debilitating mutilation. Only living organs are suitable for transplantation. Vital organs cannot be transplanted from a dead body. Only tissues, such as corneas or heart valves, are suitable for transplantation after the heart has stopped and there is no circulation. The fictitious concoction of "brain death" is a fraudulent subterfuge coined and expended to deprive defenseless persons of their God-given right to life, often for profit. Removal of vital organs after a declaration of "brain death" is precisely what causes the death of the patient whose vital organ or organs are thus excised.

While this doubtless may prolong the life of the person receiving such organs by transplant, the procedure does violate the moral principle that evil may not be done that good might come of it. That is, a good end does not justify an evil means.

--Paul A. Byrne, M.D., a neonatalogist and pediatrician in Toledo, Ohio