Wesley J. Smith: Medical-Bioethical Elite Seek License to Kill for Body Organs

CNS News ^ | 10/7/09 | Wesley J. Smith

[wagglebee]

Oh-oh: Here they come. For years, organ transplant ethicists and some in the bioethics community have agitated to increase the supply of donated organs. There is nothing wrong with that in the abstract, of course. Increasing the supply would alleviate much human suffering and is devoutly to be wished.
 
But therein lurks a great danger. Increasing supply is a worthy goal only so long as the organs are obtained ethically. But there is a growing chorus among the medical and bioethical intelligentsia to obtain more organs by harvesting living patients. Yes, some of our most influential voices now seek a license to kill for organs.
 
They don’t put it that bluntly, of course. Rather—reflecting the spirit of our times—advocates argue that our definition of death should be changed to allow a great pretense that living patients are actually dead, thus permitting organ procurement. 
 
For example, the internationally prestigious science journal Nature recently editorialized for the liberalization of the rules governing the declaration of brain death in order to obtain more organs.
 
Currently, brain death requires the irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain and each of its constituent parts. Nature’s editorial claimed—without proof—that doctors obey “the spirit but not the letter, of this law. And many are feeling uncomfortable about it.” 
 
As well they should. But the proper answer to unethical practice isn’t to accommodate wrong behavior by redefining it as right. Rather, it is to work to bring actual methods back into proper alignment with legal and ethical practice.
 
Instead, Nature descends into rank relativism, arguing that “the legal details of declaring death in someone who will never again be the person he or she was should be weighed against the value of giving a full and healthy life to someone who will die without transplant.”
 
In other words, some of us are more valuable than others of us, and those deemed inferior can be used as if they were mere natural resources.
 
In that seductive prescription is the end of human equality and universal rights.
 
Lest you think I exaggerate, a 2004 article published in the Journal of Medical Ethics seriously proposed that patients diagnosed to be in a persistent vegetative state—like Terri Schiavo—have their kidneys harvested for use in transplantation, and then replaced by pig organs to test whether animal to human transplantation (xenotransplantation) could be performed safely. 
 
“If it can be agreed upon that PVS bodies can be regarded as dead,” Ghent University (Belgium) philosopher An Ravelingien wrote, “then experimenting on them is legitimate under the same conditions as experimenting on cadavers.”
 
We are not—yet—at the point that society will permit open harvesting and experimentation on cognitively devastated people, but that doesn’t mean we won’t get there.
 
The slippery slope undermining human exceptionalism—the intrinsic value of human life simply and merely because it is human—is already slip-sliding away. Popular majorities support using nascent human life as corn crops in embryonic stem cell research, if the embryos were “leftovers” and going to be thrown out anyway.
 
But scientists have already moved beyond that early limitation. Many are now actively researching human cloning toward the end of manufacturing embryos for use and destruction in research.
 
And it won’t stop there if current trends continue. We already see early advocacy for “fetal farming,” that is, gestating fetuses for use in organ transplantation and medical experimentation.
 
Thus bioethicist Jacob Appel urged in the Huffington Post that women who intend to abort should be paid to carry their babies into the later stages of pregnancy so that the aborted fetuses can be harvested. He even suggests that fetuses be created solely for this purpose:
 
Someday, if we are fortunate, scientific research may make possible farms of artificial "wombs" breeding fetuses for their organs – or even the "miracle" of men raising fetuses in their abdomens. That day remains far off. However, the prospect of fetal-adult organ transplantation is a much more realistic near-term possibility.
 
A market in such organs might benefit both society and the women who choose to take advantage of it.
 
It would be a terrible mistake to say, “It can’t happen here.” For as the late theologian Fr. Richard John Neuhaus once wrote, “Thousands of medical ethicists and bioethicists, as they are called, professionally guide the unthinkable on its passage through the debatable on its way to becoming the justifiable, until it is finally established as the unexceptionable.”
 
That process is steaming full speed ahead in the related fields of organ transplantation and biotechnology. The only way to stop this dehumanizing agenda is to take notice and push back before it is too late. Some things should ever and always be unthinkable.
 
Wesley J. Smith is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, where he directs the Center for Human Rights and Bioethics. He is the author of 12 books and his next is "A Rat Is a Pig Is a Dog Is a Boy: The Human Cost of the Animal Rights Movement" (Encounter Books, January 2010).

[wagglebee]

Thus bioethicist Jacob Appel urged in the Huffington Post that women who intend to abort should be paid to carry their babies into the later stages of pregnancy so that the aborted fetuses can be harvested. He even suggests that fetuses be created solely for this purpose:

Someday, if we are fortunate, scientific research may make possible farms of artificial "wombs" breeding fetuses for their organs – or even the "miracle" of men raising fetuses in their abdomens. That day remains far off. However, the prospect of fetal-adult organ transplantation is a much more realistic near-term possibility.

This is revolting.

[wagglebee]

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[wagglebee]

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[w1andsodidwe]

In the 70's I was working in a children's nursing home. We had a 17 year old placed there. He had been badly injured in a car accident. He had severe head injuries and he was basically flat lined and we know these people can never recover don't we?

His mother was asked to just let him go and donate his organs. She refused and he was sent to us to care for until he died. Several months later he left us. WALKING OUT ON HIS OWN FEET.

[luvtheconstitution]

These bioethicists are completely void of a conscience. They are a bunch of self-appointed Gods whose arrogance and ego are overwhelming.

[Clock King]

or even the "miracle" of men raising fetuses in their abdomens.

They already show this crap on Torchwood (Dr. Who spin-off). They are indoctrinating our children to their evil ways. Sick bastards.

This is how these monsters see us. As just organic matter for them to play god with.

[wagglebee]

That’s what these monsters want, they believe our only value is for our “parts”.

[Frantzie]

Just like communist China. Organ harvesting for $$$$$$$.

Obama’s police state.

[Sacajaweau]

The electronic records mandated in the stimulus will likely be used to conjur up organs...Euthanasia is just up the road....

[300winmag]

Instead, Nature descends into rank relativism, arguing that “the legal details of declaring death in someone who will never again be the person he or she was should be weighed against the value of giving a full and healthy life to someone who will die without transplant.”

I recently had my infected gall bladder removed. I will never again "be the same person I was".

Should they now harvest me for the good parts I have remaining? They might try, but I still have at least one friend in this world who would object:

Be careful when coveting other people's body parts. You might become an unwitting donor yourself.

[Windcatcher]

"The key ingredient in the anti-agapic cannot be synthesized. It must be taken from living beings. For one to live forever, another one must die. You will fall upon one another like wolves. It will make what we did pale by comparison. The billions who live forever will be a testimony to my work, and the billions who are murdered to buy that immortality will be the continuance of my work. Not like us? You will become us. That's my monument, commander."

Babylon 5, Deathwalker

[Global2010]

Happen not to be the worst case scenerio many times.

My son may be a quad but his zest for life is more so than some non disabled people.

Yet we have had Docs tell us over the years why let him suffer, he doesnt see his life as unfruitful!

OTOH we have had awesome Docs who support his love of life.

Before I got through the article I thought about Terri and I am really suprized her husband did not donate her body parts.

My son refuses to put donor on his ID card or on his Advanced Directive. Due to the fact he is worried a doc with the wrong insight may pull the plug if he were ever on a vent again.

[wagglebee]

Before I got through the article I thought about Terri and I am really suprized her husband did not donate her body parts.

I'm fairly certain the dehydration made that impossible.

[Oatka]

Back in the ‘70s I was a big reader of Sci Fi. Then the future became what I used to think was fantasy and I quit.

One prophetic story I read concerned a guy in prison who breaks out of his cell, but not the prison. He gets to a huge room where thousands of human organs are stored in tanks and begins smashing them, allowing that if he was going to be executed, it would be for something meaningful.

It seems that in the future (now not that far off) the govt started harvesting organs from executed criminals. After a while they ran of out the usual criminal type and gradually started lowering the death penalty.

The crime that our hero was sentenced to death for? Fifteen parking tickets.

[jackibutterfly]

"These bioethicists are completely void of a conscience. They are a bunch of self-appointed Gods whose arrogance and ego are overwhelming."

WHY in the world are they called "ethicists"??? What's so "ethical" about them, anyway?

[w1andsodidwe]

My son refuses to put donor on his ID card or on his Advanced Directive. Due to the fact he is worried a doc with the wrong insight may pull the plug if he were ever on a vent again.

After my experience with doctor treatment of my father and patients at the nursing home I worked at, my drivers license does not authorize donation of organs. I have thought long and hard about it, and while my father could have benefited from a donated kidney, he was told he was too old for it in his mid sixties. And my father had a living twin, who would have donated if asked.

[Yorlik803]

That is why I am not a oragn donor.
In PA, the then governor Casey needed a new organ, but the center for organ recovery said there was no matching organs, but low and behold, a few days later a man with the exactly the same blood type was beaten to death and his organs went to the governor.
What keeps a rich man who needs something from getting a date base, finding some poor soul who is signed up and is a match from killing the person and harvesting the needed parts.He promises the Hospital and boat load of cash and nobody know anything.
Sounds paranoid, but anymore money talks loud.

[Salvation]

Prayers for the transplant doctors and ethicists and for the elderly.

Prayer for Those Who Are Terminally Ill

 

Lord Jesus, you healed so many people during your public ministry. I bring before you now, in prayer, all those who are terminally ill -- those afflicted with cancer, AIDS, and other illnesses.

 

Look lovingly and compassionately upon them. Let them feel the strength of your consolation. Help them and their families to accept this cross they are asked to carry.  Protect them from euthanasia, Lord.

 

Let them see you carrying their cross with them, at their side, as you once carried yours to Calvary. May Mary be there, too, to comfort them. 

 

Lord Jesus, I know and believe that, if it is your will, you can cure those I pray for (especially N.). I place my trust in you. I pray with faith, but I also pray as you did in Gethsemane: your will be done. 

 

Bless us, Lord, and hear my prayer. Amen.

 

Reprinted from "Queen of Apostles Prayerbook" with permission of copyright holder, Pauline Books & Media,

[little jeremiah]

I was going to copy one sentence that struck me as especially horrible and then I found about 10 or 15 more.

If this continues at this rate, in 20 years we will be living in Hell absolute. It cannot continue in this direction.

[wagglebee]

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