Columnist: Government Should Take Organs for Donation, No Opt-Out Allowed
by Rebecca TaylorI have said many times that we abandon the embryo at our own peril. Once we allow some human organisms to be ripped apart for their cells, then we all start to look more and more like harvestable biological material.
No where is this more apparent than in the debates about organ donation. Donating organs in the event of death used to be considered something that should be completely voluntary and without incentive. But because the demand for organ outweighs the supply, more and more we are hearing that organ donation should be “opt-out” instead of “opt-in” where doctors presume consent unless otherwise specified and family members have no say in the matter.
After all, you are a bag of organs that could be used better elsewhere.
Ted Rall, American columnist and cartoonist, goes one step further and says organ donation should be mandatory, no “opt-out” allowed, and the government should just take organs for those who need them. From “Mandatory Organ Donation“:
On the other hand, it is estimated that 18 people die every day due to a national shortage of organ donations. This crisis can be solved.First of all, of those 2.5 million American deaths every year, only a very small percentage of those would be eligible for organ donation. A patient has to have suffered brain death where their brain is no longer functioning but, with the help of a ventilator to keep oxygen flowing, their heart is still pumping blood keeping their other organs intact.
Don’t worry: This is not one of those pieces calling for you to consider signing the donor section on the back of your driver’s license. My solution is more radical: When you die, the government should take your organs….
If the government can save 18 people a day by harvesting every available organ, why doesn’t it pass a law making it so?…
About 2.5 million Americans die every year. Most are burned or planted in the ground, completely wasted. Vast numbers of them rot away, their bodies containing potentially lifesaving organs, left intact — or embalmed — for only one reason: Politicians are too cowardly to challenge the ancient idea that there is something sacred in a hunk of flesh.
Does anyone really want a bunch of government employees running around hospitals deciding who is brain dead as who is not?
Even doctors get this wrong. Just ask Caroline Burns who woke up on the operating table as doctors were about to harvest her organs. Or Sam Schmid, a 20 year-old college student who woke up from his coma after doctors declared him brain dead and were prepared to harvest his organs. Or Steven Thorpe, a British teenager that was declared brain dead by four specialists. His parents were approached about organ donation, but they were sure that there was still life left in Steven. They persisted and Steven was reevaluated. Two weeks later he woke from his coma.
How many others like Caroline, Sam or Steven have been misdiagnosed as “brain dead?”
How would Caroline, or Sam, or Steven faired if the government had decided that their organs were better used by someone else? Would the cries of Steven parents have been heard? Or would the decision have ceased to be theirs?
That is the problem with making organ donation mandatory. The assumption really is that your organs are of better use somewhere else. Once brain death is “established” then you become a bag of harvestable biological material, a “hunk of flesh” according to Rall. You are no longer valuable other than for your parts. (Sounds like the plight of the embryo.)
And does anyone really trust the government to make those determinations?
I certainly don’t.
Source:LifeSite News
1 comment:
Are you sure you want to be an organ donor? My daughter did not get advance treatment for her brain injury but instead was left to slowly die of cardiac arrest. After her death, I went to the hospital and got her medical records. I discovered that my daughter was exhibiting brain stem function when the call was made that she had irreversible brain damage. They determined her to be brain dead before even doing the necessary confirmatory test. There was a haste to acquire her organs. In fact the diagnosis and the demand for her organs was presented in one sentence. This is why I began my research on brain death, organ donation and the donor operation.
I have found out that there are many critics of brain death determination. They do not believe that the brain injured victims is dead, because he is breathing. The ventilator is a machine that helps you to breathe, but it does not assist the function of the brain. It takes the function of the brain to keep the heart beating, and the temperature normal. Organs are only donated from the brain injured victim, because they need organs that are profuse and oxygenated.
The donor is hooked up to a ventilator and wheeled to the operating suite. He is met by the transplant teams from different hospitals. There could be as many as sixteen surgeons, elbow to elbow trying to excise their promised organs. Some are there for the thoracic cavity, some for the abdominal cavity, and the rest for the left overs. Anesthesiologists are only there to make sure that the organs are profuse and oxygenated. Providing, analgesia, and unconsciousness are not necessary. Therefore, I believe this explains why the heartbeat of the donor will rise from 100 to 220 beats per minute at the same time that the knife is inserted into his thoracic cavity. It is also reported that the donor might twitch, move his limbs, and he may even do complex moves like sit up, this is called the Lazarus reflex. Don’t you have to use your brain to perform complex moves? I believe this is what we call our adrenaline rush that we all humans get when we face death. It allows us to do something supernatural. I am against organ donation because it was the option the doctors chose instead of giving my daughter treatment for brain injury. My daughter got one treatment for intracranial brain pressure, it was mannitol. The least aggressive treatment of all. It is said, “ the young are providing the organs for the elderly” to prolong their lives for a couple more years. More than half of the organs go to people over 50, more are given to those in their sixties. This is the health crisis that we have been led to believe. The health crisis is to provide organs for the elderly. This just does not seem right. How come we have not seen the face of the elderly on the poster ads of being a donor recipient, when in fact they get more than half of the transplants? Why are we selling these free organs to the governments of the nations? The taxpayers are giving the organs and paying for them for transplants. Help me crack this injustice?
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