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 Life support would be withdrawn from disabled children and their heart would be removed about 75 seconds after it stopped beating.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.”
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.
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