In related news, there is a crisis in the availability of organs for transplants. That leads to the question of who should be killed for organ harvesting.
"The story concerns the Canadian situation. But I would warrant the same is true in the USA.Apparently Belgium is ahead of the curve on that also:
Alas, as I have discussed here and elsewhere frequently, the reduced organ supply and the increased demand has many in bioethics and organ transplant medicine urging that we kill living, seriously brain injured patients, for their organs.
In Belgium, doctors kill and harvest as part of the euthanasia program.
Biological colonialism has the well off buying the organs of the destitute or going to China where people are matched and murdered to supply organs to buyers.
We have some even saying that organ donation should be mandatory after death.
Organ transplant medicine is a wonderful thing. But the desire to help desperately ill patients threatens to induce us to abandon morality and ethics in the name of healing.
"My first anti-euthanasia article, published in Newsweek in 1993, warned that one day euthanasia would be coupled with organ harvesting “as a plum to society.” Over the years, I was chided as an alarmist. But it didn’t take the Belgians long after legalizing euthanasia for doctors to do just that, and now they brag about it at medical symposia. Most of the euthanized and harvested were not terminally ill, but disabled. One had a mental illness."
From the Weekly Standard: At the Bottom of the Slippery Slope; Where euthanasia meets organ harvesting.
"The idea of coupling euthanasia with organ harvesting and medical experimentation was promoted years ago by the late Jack Kevorkian, but it is now becoming mainstream. Last year, the Oxford bioethicist Julian Savulescu coauthored a paper in Bioethics arguing that some could be euthanized, “at least partly to ensure that their organs could be donated.” Belgian doctors, in particular, are openly discussing the nexus between euthanasia and organ harvesting. A June 10 press release from Pabst Science Publishers cited four lung transplants in Leuven from donors who died by euthanasia.
What’s more, Belgian doctors and bioethicists now travel around Europe promoting the conjoining of the two procedures at medical seminars. Their PowerPoint presentation touts the “high quality” of organs obtained from patients after euthanasia of people with degenerative neuro/muscular disabilities.
Coupling organ donation with euthanasia turns a new and dangerous corner by giving the larger society an explicit stake in the deaths of people with seriously disabling or terminal conditions. Moreover, since such patients are often the most expensive for whom to care, and given the acute medical resource shortages we face, one need not be a prophet to see the potential such advocacy has for creating a perfect utilitarian storm.
Go to the sites for additional links.
Also, Belgium pioneers organ donation after voluntary euthanasia.
1 comment:
Don't call it euthenasia, don't call it abortion. Call it by its real name: murder.
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