Editor’s note. The following
appears on bioethicist Wesley
Smith’s indispensable blog
http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/secondhandsmoke
and is reprinted with permission.
Oh, oh: Here they come.
Nature is one of the top science
journals in the world. What is
published within its pages matter.
And now, it has editorialized to
loosen standards of declaring brain
death so that more organs can be
harvested.
From the editorial:
The law seems admirably
straightforward: “An individual who
has sustained either (1)
irreversible cessation of
circulatory and respiratory
functions, or (2) irreversible
cessation of all functions of the
entire brain, including the brain
stem, is dead.” In practice,
unfortunately, physicians know that
when they declare that someone on
life support is dead, they are
usually obeying the spirit, but not
the letter, of this law. And many
are feeling increasingly
uncomfortable about it.
Then, they should stop doing it!
Cutting corners is a profound
betrayal of the living patient
falsely declared dead, of the organ
transplant system because it
destroys public trust, and of
medicine as a whole because it turns
doctors from healers into death
causers.
Alas, Nature’s answer–in keeping
with the spirit of the age–isn’t to
rein in abuse, but expand and
liberalize death declarations so
that some living patients will be
falsely declared dead:
Ideally, the law should be
changed to describe more accurately
and honestly the way that death is
determined in clinical practice.
Most doctors have hesitated
to say so too loudly, lest they be
caricatured in public as greedy
harvesters eager to strip living
patients of their organs. But their
public silence was broken on 24
September at an international
meeting that included physicians,
transplant surgeons and bioethicists
at the Italian Festival of Health in
Viareggio. The meeting concluded
that lawmakers in the United States
and elsewhere should reconsider
rigid definitions of death, and
called for a wider public debate.
I am sorry, but dead “for all
intents and purposes,” isn’t dead:
The people won’t stand for it no
matter what “the experts” say. And
get this relativism:
Few things are as sensitive as
death. But concerns about the legal
details of declaring death in
someone who will never again be the
person he or she was should be
weighed against the value of giving
a full and healthy life to someone
who will die without a transplant.
That is the classical road of good
intentions that leads to very dark
places. Organ transplant medicine
is too important to allow relativism
and utilitarianism in the door. I
mean, there aren’t even unified
standards or training required in
the US today, and they want to
change the standards?! This agenda
must be resisted at all resolve–most
of all because it is right to
resist–but if that isn’t enough,
because loosen the definitions and
no one will want to be donors.
Please send your comments to
daveandrusko@gmail.com.
