Killing for Organs Push in The Atlantic.

This is an article by Wesley Smith, author of the book, Culture of Death,The Assault of Medical Ethics in America,  in response to the Atlantic article which is advocating killing the profoundly disabled or imminently dying for their organs.  

I’ve been saying this for the last three years here on this blog and everywhere I can that this is where we are headed.

Excerpts from Wesley’s post: 

I have repeatedly warned about articles published in medical and bioethics journals advocating killing the profoundly disabled or dying for their organs. The assault on the “dead donor rule” has now filtered down to the popular media.

The Atlantic has an article advocating that dying patients be killed for their organs rather than having to actually, you know, die first. From, “As They Lay Dying:”

Transplant-surgery programs in the United States are scrutinized by an alphabet soup of federal and nongovernmental entities. Centers with worse-than-expected transplant outcomes can be placed on probation or shut down.

Centers with worse-than-expected transplant outcomes can be placed on probation or shut down.

From the earliest days of transplantation, surgeons subscribed to an informal ethical norm known as the “dead-donor rule,” holding that organ procurement should NOT cause a donor’s death.

In practice, this meant waiting until patients were by all measures completely dead—no heartbeat, no blood pressure, no respiration—to remove any vital organs. (Sometimes 2 minutes, comment by me) 

A more useful ethical standard could involve the idea of “imminent death.” Once a person with a terminal disease reaches a point when only extraordinary measures will delay death; when use (or continued use) of these measures is incompatible with what he considers a reasonable quality of life; and when he therefore decides to stop aggressive care, knowing that this will, in relatively short order, mean the end of his life, we might say that death is “imminent.”

If medical guidelines could be revised to let people facing imminent death donate vital organs under general anesthesia, we could provide patients and families a middle ground—a way of avoiding futile medical care, while also honoring life by preventing the deaths of other critically ill people. Moreover, healthy people could incorporate this imminent-death standard into advance directives for their end-of-life care. They could determine the conditions under which they would want care withdrawn, and whether they were willing to have it withdrawn in an operating room, under anesthesia, with subsequent removal of their organs. There’s a name for that: Homicide. Doctors should never be killers, even for a “beneficial” purpose. 

If medical guidelines could be revised to let people facing imminent death donate vital organs under general anesthesia, we could provide patients and families a middle ground—a way of avoiding futile medical care, while also honoring life by preventing the deaths of other critically ill people.

Moreover, healthy people could incorporate this imminent-death standard into advance directives for their end-of-life care. They could determine the conditions under which they would want care withdrawn, and whether they were willing to have it withdrawn in an operating room, under anesthesia, with subsequent removal of their organs.

There’s a name for that: Homicide. Doctors should never be killers, even for a “beneficial” purpose. 

As my friend, Carolyn said on her Facebook page, and I agree. 

“Oh, this really makes me sick! Wake up everyone, the government is about to pass another law to enable the greedy the ability to dissect a living person for their organs. How many of you really want to die being dissected alive to satisfy the greed of a medical community and government gone mad? You think this could not happen to you, but it could.

The reason why so many fall in this cesspool of being a potential organ donor is because they are denied treatment.

Once this happens the doctor legally can demand the patient be denied anymore treatments. You can beg, I begged, You can cry, if you scream and act out, you will be arrested. Your loved is in harm’s way in a hospital in the World. You are at the mercy of a trained denial of medicine. Now they want to legally deny care to the almost, which is really what they have been doing all along.”

Read Caroly’s story about her daughter Melissa here.

I wrote on this and the dead-donor rule back in October, 2013 and the voices continue to get louder. 

The “Dead Donor Rule”

The “dead-donor rule” refers to two accepted ‘ethical norms’ that govern the practice of organ harvesting before transplantation:

1) vital organs should be taken only from dead patients,

2) living patients should not be killed for or by organ procurement.

There is a movement now by several well-known transplant surgeons to get rid of the “dead donor rule,” and call it what it is a legal fiction. Tell people the truth about what is happening…that you are not dead…yes, critically injured…but you are NOT dead.

Transplant surgeons believe that with such consent, there is no harm or wrong done in retrieving vital organs before death, provided that anesthesia is administered. But, many doctor’s and OPO’s (Organ Procurement Organizations) are not so sure and are fearful that more people will NOT consent if the truth is exposed. 

Beware of these words from doctors, “devastating neurological injury, no hope, and now “imminent death.”

Read more of Wesley’s post here.