Posted on 09/04/2008 4:59:32 PM PDT by wagglebee
LifeNews.com Note: Wesley J. Smith is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, an attorney for the International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide, and a leading monitor of bioethics issues such as assisted suicide, euthanasia and human cloning.
File this in the “As If We Don't Already Have Enough to Worry About” file:
Leading members of the organ transplantation community—backed by some bioethicists—have been waging a quiet campaign for more than ten years to do away with the “dead donor rule,” a crucial ethical protection that requires donors of non paired vital organs to have died before their body parts can be procured.
This isn't a fringe movement.
Indeed, an article urging the extinction of the dead donor rule just appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine, probably the most prestigious medical journal in the world. ("The Dead Donor Rule and Organ Transplantation" NEJM (359:7, August 14, 2008).
The authors, Robert D. Troug, MD, a physician at Harvard Medical School, and Franklin D. Miller, a bioethicist at the NIH, claim that patients brain dead may not really be dead, since, as one example, some patients declared dead by neurological criteria secrete certain hormones.
Nor, they argue, should patients whose organs are procured under protocols that permit harvesting two-to- five minutes after full cardiac arrest be considered deceased because some of these patients might be resuscitated with vigorous CPR.
But if they are right—and be clear, I don't accept their premise—then surely the ethical answer isn't to broaden the categories of living patients who are harvested!
Rather it is just the opposite; to tighten the rules to ensure that organs are taken from only truly dead patients. Otherwise, medical ethics will be mutated into mere medical expediency.
Troug and Miller disagree. Rather than death being the primary ethical consideration, they argue, the real issue should be that old catchall that justifies multitudinous wrongs; "choice.” They write:
Whether death occurs as the result of ventilator withdrawal or organ procurement, the ethically relevant precondition is valid consent by the patient or surrogate. With such consent, there is no harm or wrong done in retrieving vital organs before death, provided that anesthesia is administered. With proper safeguards, no patient will die from vital organ donation who would not otherwise die as a result of the withdrawal of life support.
No. No. No.
First, not all patients whose life support is removed necessarily die. More to the point, why should we trust bioethicists and organ transplant professionals to enforce "proper safeguards" when this article claims that the current safeguards aren't adequate despite our having been assured for years that they are?
And if the only thing that matters is consent, why not let any seriously ill patient be killed for their organs? Indeed, why not suicidal people who aren't otherwise sick?
Efforts to undermine the dead donor rule are not only wrong morally, they are profoundly unwise.
If members of the transplant community keep pushing to permit killing for organs, that sound you hear will the mass tearing up of organ donor cards by masses of people who want to be really and truly dead before their livers, hearts, and kidneys are made available for the use of other people.
This is why people should carry a NON-Donor card.
I just want enough time to read the Library of Congress.
Thanks for possibly saving many lives, clee1.
I had info on this I posted yesterday. It got pulled. Maybe I posted it wrong, I don’t know, it was late.
I will look up the article again tomorrow. There is also grant funding being made for an organ harvesting ambulence. So if you are an organ donor, and you are in an accident, you better up the harvester doesn’t get to you first.
I’ll add more.
There are any number of conditions that disqualify organ donation, and some means should be used for individuals with those conditions to identify themselves, that “all body parts must be disposed - organs unsuitable for transplant”.
More and more, less ethical medical personnel are moving away from voluntary donation, and lobbying politically to make mandatory donation the law. Or just taking the organs they want anyway. However, even the most unethical will hesitate in reusing contaminated organs, as that will be investigated and prosecuted.
And the collapse of medical ethics is so bad, that people may intentionally be administered antigens for rabies, for example, to prevent organ theft when they are hospitalized. When the value of one of your internal organs is between $30-50k, it is easy for ethics to go right out the window. They may want your organs more than they want you alive.
Not a bad idea.
I will be taking your warning under advisement, and telling others as well...
While I will be eternally grateful for the kidney transplant my mother received when I was a teenager, the stories I’ve been reading lately make me wonder if everything possible was done for her donor (She was a young lady who was in a motorcycle accident on Christmas Eve back in 1988).
This warning needs to be spread far and wide, IMHO. There is nothing wrong with organ donation - it’s one of the most wonderful gifts that can be given, but as you said - it sounds like it’s better to leave it up to your family AFTER you’re gone.
Not true.
Living wills AKA “advanced directives” are given the utmost weight and/or respect. They will keep the MD’s from violating your expressed wishes UNTIL you become completely unable to maintain mental function. At that point, your family’s wishes then will take precedence. It is vital to be VERY specific in the measures/treatments you desire to have taken.
Despite what you see on TV, other than younger mostly healthy people that have respiratory and/or cardiac arrest due to accidental reasons, CPR (and other Advanced life support methods) have less than a 12% success rate: “sucess” being defined as leaving the hospital breathing. The longer BLS/ACLS protocols are followed on a case, the less likely a successful outcome will occur.
Be cognizant of all the facts when making your Living Will.
Nope, they never tell you of all the pitfalls of a “successful” transplantation.
The lifetime of anti-rejection drugs that weaken you immune system to the point where a common cold can kill you, not to mention all the other “quality of life” issues you are now discovering.
My point is mainly this: healthcare consumers need to be more knowledgeable about their options, and more specific in the treatments they desire. Our society puts Doctors up on a pedestal; likening them to near demi-god status.
Sorry, but I work with the men and women every day. While most are highly skilled and knowledgeable, a few are putzes, and all are all to fallible.
Welcome to today’s healthcare: statistic driven and customer service oriented. You want fries with that?
My duty, and my distinct pleasure.
Thank you.
Exactly right.
Most savvy people that wish to donate organs postmortem will specify what organs for what specific purposes and who will pay the expenses in their Living Will.
Those conditions MUST be met or the donation does not proceed.
BAD idea.
Rabies vaccinations are extremely painful, and there is a significant adverse reaction rate.
The only reason they are given at all is that rabies is a horrid way to die, and is nearly uniformly fatal if untreated.
Chances are good that there was very little that could have been done for your donor.
Motorcycle accident victims usually die, > 90% of the time, from head/neck trauma. There is often very little that can be done for them, and young, health accident victims often can save up to 10 other people by the donation of their organs.
That is why I scoff at helmet laws: they save the few lives of those that crash at lower speeds, but almost all high speed motorcycle accidents result in a fatality.
Still, it is best to let you loved ones decide on donation AFTER the fact.
Thank you, clee1. I know that was most likely the case, but with all the articles coming out on this it still makes one wonder occasionally. It’s good to be reminded...
The good news, as you mentioned — not only was my mother’s life saved by her donor, but at least 8 other people received an organ donation that Christmas from her donor. It was the BEST present our family, and the other families could’ve possibly received. And, as I said, I will be forever grateful to the family whose child was lost that night, as the daughter of one of this young lady’s organ recipients.
You also mentioned helmets... The scary thing about that is my neighbor’s son was KILLED by his helmet. It was a very low-speed accident just 3 blocks from our house & his home. He had one of those helmets with the mouthguard part in the front... Anyway, they say that when he hit the pavement the helmet decapitated the poor young man. Granted this was back in the early 80s so there have been many advances made with helmets, and his parents did sue the manufacturer of the helmet itself. On the other hand, we have a good friend that survived a brutal motorcycle accident with severe head trauma (he was in a medically induced coma for several weeks). If not for his helmet he most assuredly wouldn’t be alive today - that and because he was life-flighted to one of the best hospitals in the area. I personally believe it should be up to the riders themselves if they wish to wear one or not...
Thanks, I knew you would be up to date on this one.
I have said before many times that I have no objection to my organs being used to help others after I'm dead, BUT I need to really be dead and I simply don't trust the current system to recognize the difference between life and death.
There are laws against profiting off organs, against having an organ market.
The truth is though, that that is now just a masquerade. The donor family doesn’t get a dime, but the recovery, transport, administration, and medical pieces make HUGE amounts of money off organs. The call it “expense.”
Here, see this thread.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2075213/posts
Philadelphia undertakers admit selling corpses
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