Freep-mail me to get on or off my pro-life and Catholic List:
Please ping me to note-worthy Pro-Life or Catholic threads, or other threads of general interest.
Posted on 02/19/2012 12:27:32 PM PST by wagglebee
Some of the most controversial methods of obtaining organs have been endorsed by the British Medical Association in a report released this week. “Building on Progress: what next for organ donation policy in the UK?” laments “the fact that… people are still dying unnecessarily because of a lack of organs”.
Among the measures it proposes are:
All of these measures have been debated extensively over the past few years.
The procedure which the media focused on in its coverage was “elective ventilation”. “Brain dead” patients who have suffered a massive stroke would be kept alive purely to enable organ retrieval. This led to a 50% increase in organ retrieval in 1988 at a British hospital, but it was declared unlawful in 1994.
Transplant units in Spain and the US already use the technique, said Nigel Heaton, professor of transplant surgery at King's College hospital, London. "People have qualms about it. The concern is that you are prolonging or introducing futile treatment that has no benefit for the patient. But I expect that views will gradually change.”
Elective ventilation was criticised by Professor Nadey Hakim, of Hammersmith Hospital, as "bizarre and unethical". "It's not ethical keeping someone alive," he said. "They're brain dead and you have to remember there's a family next door in tears. I find it bizarre that the BMA wants to push for something so unpopular. This is how we kill any desire for people to become donors."
Retrieving hearts from newborn babies is still an experimental procedure. Life support would be withdrawn from disabled children and their heart would be removed about 75 seconds after it stopped beating. Although the BMA report does not mention it, this clearly violates the "dead donor" rule – that donors have to be dead before vital organs can be removed.
The report acknowledges that donation after cardiac death is a hard sell to the public, especially if a heart which stops beating in one body begins to beat again in another. However, the BMA believes that it is ethically acceptable, even though:
“A careful explanation of the way in which death is diagnosed will be needed and an explanation that a heart that has stopped beating can be restarted after the person has died and used for transplantation. It might also be helpful to refer to fact that the first heart transplant, under Christian Barnard, was from a DCD donor.”
And the solution will be to make donation mandatory.
The "Brave New World" is here and it's horrifying.
Freepmail wagglebee to subscribe or unsubscribe from the moral absolutes ping list.
FreeRepublic moral absolutes keyword search
Freep-mail me to get on or off my pro-life and Catholic List:
Please ping me to note-worthy Pro-Life or Catholic threads, or other threads of general interest.
•Elective ventilation: keeping patients alive solely so they can become organ donors,
•Retrieving hearts from newborn disabled babies,
•Using body parts from high-risk donors including the elderly, people with cancer, drug users and people with high-risk sexual behaviour.”
If this were the plot outline for a horror movie, the critics would be laughing at the absurdity.
A Modest Proposal.
OMG. How scary. And people snub their noses at me when I tell them NO WAY IN HELL would I sign my name on my driver’s license or put in my will that I want to be an organ donor.
Dear God, wagglebee, I was afraid to read he article and I was right.
The funds raised in these FReepathons go to pay our current quarter expenses. But we're also going to try to replace some of our older servers and failing equipment this year so we're going to add a little extra to our FReepathon goals. John is estimating ten to fifteen thousand to do this and I'd like to get it all in place and working before the election cycle is fully heated up, so we'll try to bring in a little extra now, if we can, and the rest next quarter.
Jim Robinson
A few years ago, there was an organ harvesting scandal in New York/New Jersey region.
Funeral homes were harvesting organs and body parts for transplants.
Probably the most famous person who had parts harvested was Alistar Cook,who died of cancer.
This is INFANTICIDE!
And just wait until someone decides to start removing organs from adults with disabilities.
The horrible evils are accelerating.
That begs the question of why the heart isn't restarted while it is in its owner's chest, instead of removing it to restart it in someone else's chest.
I still fail to see the rationale behind organ transplantation. When a person is so ill that their organs are failing, perhaps it's time for them to say goodbye, instead of hoping and praying for a healthy person to die so they can get the organs? As immoral as it is merely to hope for another person to die, isn't it far worse to hasten another person's death in order to harvest their organs?
Protesting the policy will move you to the top of the list
“Next thing they will be “suggesting” that organs be retrieved from living prisoners, starting with people on death row ... with the application of pressure and sufficient time, all convicted felons will be candidates for “ventilation!”
Wait until new organs can actually extend a person’s life beyond a normal lifespan. Larry Niven talked about this in some of his sci-fi, and not in a good way. From wiki:
“...the problem led to a repressive society almost unrecognizable by today’s standards. Since the average citizens wished to extend their lives, the world government sought to increase the supply by using condemned criminals to supply the organ banks. When this failed to meet the demand, citizens would vote for the death penalty for more and more trivial crimes. First violent crimes, then theft, tax evasion, false advertising, and even traffic violations became punishable by the organ banks.”
He was talking about “organ legging” back in the late 60’s.
Freegards
Paging Dr. Mengele.
These are the end times for Dewey Crowe.
My cousin just died from a brain tumor. She was only 38. 2 people have her kidneys and 1 her liver. She’s a better person than you are. My sister has had 2 kidney transplants. One from my mom one from a teenager who died in a car wreck.
“Wait until new organs can actually extend a person’s life beyond a normal lifespan. Larry Niven talked about this in some of his sci-fi, and not in a good way.”
I am certain the elites of this world know all about this.
Kissinger... He’s been ancient for as long as I can remember, yet continue to reign supreme.
My method is to avoid ever going to a doctor or hospital, for starters.
A good question would be how long a person’s life can possibly be extended with the technology and technique we have today.
Niven speculated that everything eventually could be used, they could do full skin transplants, one would be constantly getting younger parts when the old ones wore out or became diseased. In his sci-fi, this retarded medical advances in other directions, as fresh healthy organs from “criminals” were so much cheaper than anything else. The only thing that stopped the organ bank pressure was when artificial/owner cloned organs caught up in price point to the criminal parts, if I recall.
Freegards
GAH! That’s utterly disgusting! I don’t want to be a half-deady with my body being harvested for parts because I marked “organ donor” on my driver’s license.
You are not the only one. Not only have I refused to sign the back of my DL, my living will directs no organ donations(not even those ghouls from the Lions Club are to touch my eyes), AND I have on numerous occasions spoken vehemently to friends and family I will take EVERYTHING I was born with to my grave. I do NOT trust those vile, disgusting organ-harvesting ghouls from th organ banks. I think anyone that is an organ donor is at greater risk of being declared dead prematurely, especially if they were young, healthy with viable organs at the time of their death.
Call me a conspiracy theorist, I just don’t trust those ghouls one iota.
If you've got a strong stomach here's the clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aclS1pGHp8o
> •making donation after cardiac death a normal source for organs<
.
As long as donations are post-death and remain voluntary, but don’t expect it to continue that way.
Someday the elite will demand organ donations from the the not-so-elites.
of course this is coming. you’d be a fool to think it’s not
End the prohibition on compensating individuals and their heirs for organs, and the shortage vanishes.
My I suggest a movie .....”Never Let Me Go”..
Some things are not as far away as they seem .....
Even Boxer gave his body to The State in the end...
People are paid to be blood donors routinely and people have sold their organs for cash. No doubt it is crass. A traditional ethicist would argue that such a donation is not voluntary but coerced by the economic need of the donor. However consider the motivation of an unpaid donor. Does the gift really satisfy the donors need to be recognized as doing good or some other self gratifying emotion? Does a voluntary donor have a “psychological need”? Why should behavior motivated by economic gain be excluded but not other forms of self gratification? Finally the prisoner as a potential donor is an interesting dilemma. Truly an organ donation for freedom is easily seen as coercion. Yet if it is not mandatory,original sentences are not affected (although they ultimately might be) and non donors are not punished, why does a prisoner not have the right to make a decision that the prisoner views as being in his or her best interests? It is very difficult to parse the motivation for human behavior.
What??? No utilizing organs from condemned criminals?
It’s ain’t about anything but the $$$$s.
This is touched in the “ARM” stories with a cop named Gil. Those who kidnapped and killed people for organs were called “organleggers”.
What’s ironic though is that in Niven’s stories, running multiple red lights got you executed because you deliberately put others at risk. We have a society reluctant to kill murderers - but not innocent but inconvenient people.
The pilot for the “Max Headroom” show had a similar theme in it. You could go buy body parts or whole bodies, no questions asked.
Dr. Walter E. Williams said it best while subbing for El Rushbo one day. The organ shortage will be solved when a person or their designated executors are allowed to SELL THEIR OWN organs.
The idea that people are supposed to DONATE organs for free, while the surgeon makes $50K a pop and more, never made sense to me.
The donor, Mr William Lucas, had been conveniently bludgeoned to death around the same time they discovered Casey needed a transplant.
The point is, I really don't want to be in critical condition in some hospital at the same time that some VIP, who I'm a tissue match for, needs an organ.
The best response to “forced” organ donation is that there is a long list of diseases and conditions that make organs unacceptable for donation. And if someone is suspected of having such a disease or condition, there are tests to determine if they have it.
If the test is positive, no “what passes for ethical these days” surgeon will touch it.
But in many, if not all such tests, harmless “simulants” also exist that can give them a false positive.
So if someone carries a card indicating that they have one of the proscribed diseases or conditions, and they consume the proper simulant, this would give them an extra measure of protection against organ snatching.
It's all horrific, but I was especially drawn to the high-risk sexual behavior classification. Prostitutes and gays. But what about the HIV status? What good does it do you to get a new liver from a whore just to find out she/he's got HIV??
I suppose they say they'd test for that first.
I’m with you 100%. I have it stated in my will that if I’m on life support, it is to be disconnected after 2 years and not a minute before. Don’t trust anyone in the harvest field. “Bio” and “Ethic” in a sentence makes me run the other way.
I have questioned the numbers of comatose patients who revived after being declared brain dead, but were not. The doctors needed the organ and f*** the patient with an injury. One guy was to have eyes harvested within several minutes. He revived. What would the doctors have done had he revived after they took his eyes? Yeah, you know, they would have killed him and went for daquiris after work.
I have met those who used to work on the “retrieval” side of organ donation. Things like this go on now. I will not sign an organ donor card for that reason.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.