We stand at a cultural crossroads, the intersection of the Culture of Life and the Culture of Death. At this critical juncture, the choices we make matter, now and forever. Therefore, the members of Life is Worth Living, a lay apostolate, have chosen to promote the Culture of Life.
Our mission is to strive to affirm -- in thought, word, and deed -- the infinite preciousness of human life; to encourage service to others rather than radical self-interest; and to promote a climate of public opinion that recognizes the right of all human beings to life, respect, compassionate care, appropriate medical treatment, and equality under the law.
Organ Donation and Transplantation Q&A
posted by Julie Grimstad
Thursday, May 22, 2008
The impulse to give the “gift of life” by donating your organs is a noble one, but it is unwise to make this decision on impulse alone.
Informed consent is the ethical cornerstone of medical decision making. Without truthful and complete disclosure of information about a procedure, it is impossible to give informed consent. Here are answers to questions about the donation and transplantation of vital organs—questions you may not even know you should ask.[*]
The most important question: Are organ donors really dead before their vital organs are removed?
The simple answer is that donors of vital organs cannot be and are not dead. Before organ transplantation was possible, physicians cautiously determined death in order not to treat the living as dead. Today, both “brain death” and “cardiac death” are hastily declared, not for the patient’s welfare, but because removal of vital organs must be done before they begin to deteriorate due to loss of blood circulation. Vital organs are useless if physicians wait the time necessary to determine that a person is certainly dead.
If “brain death” is not death, what is it?
“Brain death” is a legal fiction. This fiction enables surgeons to remove living organs, without legal liability, from patients who are not dead yet, but will be after their organs are excised. Consider these facts:
- A person can be pronounced “brain dead” while he or she has a beating heart, as well as normal pulse, blood pressure, color and temperature. All signs of life.
- “Brain dead” patients’ wounds heal. “Brain dead” children grow. “Brain dead” pregnant women, kept alive for extended periods, gestate and deliver healthy babies and produce milk. All signs of life.
- A “brain dead” donor is given a paralyzing drug to prevent squirming and grimacing when the incision is made to remove organs. Even paralyzed, his or her pulse races and blood pressure shoots up. Dead people don’t react to being cut.
Accounts of patients who have recovered after a firm diagnosis of “brain death” demonstrate that “brain dead” patients are not certainly dead. In some cases they are not even close to it. Take Zack Dunlap’s story. In November 2007, this 21-year-old Oklahoman flipped over on his 4-Wheeler and suffered catastrophic brain injuries. Thirty-six hours later, doctors at United Regional Healthcare System in
Recoveries like Zack’s should at least make us wonder: How many potential organ donors are prematurely written off? This is not an unimportant question, particularly if the potential donor is you or your loved one.
Must a person be declared “brain dead” in order to be used as an organ donor?
No. Donor eligibility has been broadened to include another group of people who are not dead yet—patients on ventilators whom doctors label “hopeless” or “vegetative.” New rules were established to permit “donation by cardiac death” (DCD). DCD was proposed because more organs are wanted to satisfy the ever increasing demand and decisions to withdraw life support have become so easy and private.
What is “donation by cardiac death”?
A patient or family can agree to have the ventilator turned off and a “do not resuscitate” order written, then consent to organ donation. The patient is usually taken to an operating room where the ventilator is turned off. If or when the patient becomes pulseless, “cardiac death” is declared. In order to ensure healthy organs, speed is of the essence. The organ retrieval team waits only 2 to 5 minutes before beginning organ removal. The donor may be given an anesthetic just in case the team acts too quickly.
If you go without a pulse for two to five minutes in some hospitals, you’re a dead organ donor. In other places, at two minutes or five minutes or 30 minutes, they’re still trying to revive you. This means that patients in identical states are deemed dead if they are destined to be organ donors or alive when destined for resuscitation attempts.
Conclusion: The thrust of protocols that permit organ donation after “brain death” and “cardiac death” is simply this: “Let’s call them dead so we won’t be accused of murder when we stop their beating hearts and cut out their living organs.” For this reason, transplantation of vital organs taken from “dead” people can not be morally justified.
[*]The sole focus of this brochure is donation of vital organs (also called vascularized organs—organs that require continuous circulation of blood to remain useful for purposes of transplantation) after “brain death” or “cardiac death.” Other types of organ or tissue donation are beyond the scope of this brochure.
Labels: Organ Donation and Transplantation
The question is not only one of ethics, but also of how much we REALLY do know about science of the human body. God created it. He announces in His Word that His thoughts are higher than ours ... yet, we insist on believing that our current level of understanding is the ultimate and there is no more to learn.
I was willy nilly willing to be a good corpse and donate my organs back when you could so indicate on your driver's license. Something in my "knower" wiggled. Okay, the Holy Spirit quietly said NO. So I said NO, feeling a bit selfish, and not knowing why I would refuse someone the gift of life.
We hear of old caskets being found with scratch marks on the inside, of bells being attached to the inside of the coffin so that one waking from the dead could ring for rescue. Surely this is not new phenomenon. People have been coming back to life afer being dead for what one might consider a long time. (After all, how long would one have been "dead" who was buried with a string connected to a bell?)
The other side of the coin is, "no greater love has a man than he lay down his life for his bother".
I guess, until the Holy Spirit says otherwise, I will continue to withold the donor status on my driver's license.
Amebenit
: June 19, 2008 1:52 PM : June 19, 2008 3:42 PM I would think giving organs you no longer need to the save the lives of up to 10 people would be something the holy spirit would be very in support of.
The cases you have spoken of are poorly documented and without proper evidence. There are also millions of deaths where people do not come back to life.
I find it hard to believe God would rather you allowed hundreds of people to keep dying each year whilst waiting for organs on the offchance you defied science and still had life in you after death.
The whole story of the crucifixion is about sacrifice and giving yourself for others, organ donation does not even ask that you give your life, just parts you no longer need.
I find the views expressed on this website extremely callous and lacking in consideration for those waiting for an organ and those dying without one.
: June 30, 2008 5:18 AM You are going the right way in not signing permission to take your organs when you apply for a driver's license. Under the new Uniform Anatomical Gift Act, already passed in 35 states, you are presumed to be an organ donor unless you have refused. I am not aware of any state that provides a way for you to refuse. On this website, we have recently posted a Medical Card (4 versions for people of different religions)which people can have printed on business cards, sign, have witnessed, then laminated for protection. This card should be carried with a person at all times. Simply go to the lifeisworthliving.com home page and click on the topic "Medical Card." The reason to refuse is the same wherever we worship; however it is necessary to have one for Catholics, one for non-Catholics Christians, one for Jews, and one for Agnostics.
Incidentally, no one has been buried alive since embalming.
Paul Byrne, M.D.
You wrote, " I find it hard to understand what you see as the holy spirit's objection?" The Holy Spirit is God. For Catholics, the teachings of the Church are clear in the Catechism. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states in #2296 that "it is not morally admissible to bring about the disabling mutilation or death of a human being even in order to delay the death of other persons."
You wrote, "I find it hard to believe God would rather you allowed hundreds of people to keep dying each year whilst waiting for organs on the off chance you defied science and still had life in you after death." We know about God from the written word in the Bible; we know that God is Jesus who lived on earth. He did raise from the dead when He was asked.
A person who is said to be "dying" is living. A person is alive until dead. After death, what is left on earth is the remains of someone, an empty corpse. We have been deceived into thinking and believing that organs are suitable for transplantation after death. Every time a heart is transplanted, after about an hour of operating while the patient is paralyzed to keep him from moving and squirming, the transplant surgeon stops the beating heart just before he lifts it out of the chest to place it in cooling solution.
After true death tissues are suitable for transplantation, but not organs. Organs deteriorate quickly without circulation, e.g., the heart in 4-5 minutes, the liver in 4-5 minutes, kidney in 30 minutes. Corneas can be taken many hours after circulation has ceased because the cornea gets oxygen from the air though the tears. Recently there has been developed an artificial cornea made of plastic that might prove to be better than a cornea transplant. Time will tell.
You wrote, "I find the views expressed on this website extremely callous and lacking in consideraton for those waiting for an organ and those dying without one." We are standing for life from its conception to its natural end. We are concerned about those who are on a list looking for organs. We are very sensitive to the issues. We cannot condone terminating the life of someone to get their organs for someone else. Can you understand our position? We ask God to bless you and all who are very sick with a failing organ.
Paul Byrne, M.D.
Secondly the person has been declared dead. Their brain function has ceased as would other processes, any functions ar epurely from life support and not from the body itself. If the organs are not taken, life support will be switched off any way so there is no hope of life.
Your passage on "we have been deceived" shows your lack of knowledge on the science of organ donation. Donors are brain dead meaning the brain has ceased function, squirming or moving is not possible without brain function and donors are not paralysed.
We have not been deceived, it is merely a case of where life ends. When someone cannot think, move, speak or even breathe for themselves and no bodily functions work unless controlled artificially by machines, I would call that death.
God also sent Jesus to heal people and save lives, why would he not want his us to be in his likeness and do the same?
I don't see how you can truly claim to be pro life when, by peddling organ donation myths and discouraging it, you could be standing in the way of saving lives. Organ donation is about saving lives after death, keeping a body in circulation is not life, life is so much more than that and someone on life support is being given false signs of life by a machine.
How do you expect those waiting for an organ to have their lives saved if not through a new organ? Organ donation is an amazing thing to give something you no longer need to save someones life and restore them to health is miraculous and I think you insult your own religion and it's principles by discouraging such an act of generosity and love.
: July 19, 2008 12:16 PM To remove an appendix is mutilation, but it is acceptable because the appendix is diseased. The appendectomy is to protect and preserve the life of the person with appendicitis.
Yes, the donor is declared legally dead. The donor's heart is beating 100,000 times a day. the donor has normal blood pressure, circulation and respiration. When the donor is cut into, the donor moves and squirms if he is not given a paralyzing drug. Even with the paralyzing drug in the donor, the heart rate and blood pressure increase. This reaction is similar to what the anesthesiologist observes if the anesthetic would be too light.
Anonymous, does this sound like it would be acceptable to you?
Yes, it is a matter of when life ends. Better yet, no one ought to be declared dead unless life has left the body. Think about it.
Paul A. Byrne, M.D.
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