Organ Donation

[Servant1]

Dr. Colossus:

The original question was this:

This was the part of the question I was answering. The CCC of course states that organ donation in and of itself can be a wonderful gift.

Dr Colossus -

I appreciate the clarification. It took me 3 times to read it to catch on! DUH! Thick-skull syndrome here.

I’m with ya now.

 

[txangel]

Since I lost my sister 5 years ago to liver disease (she was waiting on a transplant) I have been very active in getting people to sign up to be organ donors. The people I met at support group were wonderful and I still keep in touch.

You MUST inform your family and your doctor. Even if you have a “Donor” sticker on your license the physician CANNOT harvest the organs without family consent. Make sure everyone you know understands your desire in this regard.

Organ donation is a true Gift of Life. I couldn’t imagine the Church being against it. After all, once we’re with God, we have no need of our organs.

 

[JimG]

Servant1, thanks for your clarifications about organ donations. This has always been a cloudy issue for me because I know that dead organs are of no use to anyone. The problem many people have with the idea is that we see a person who is breathing and whose heart is beating. For organ donation to occur, that person must be declared dead by someone else. I worry about whom that someone else might be and whether they might have other priorities, and even whether their criteria for brain death are correct. If the ventilator is disconnected, will the patient stop breathing? I’m not doubting what you have said, but this will certainly push me to research the subject further.

JimG

 

[Servant1]

JimG:

Servant1, thanks for your clarifications about organ donations. This has always been a cloudy issue for me because I know that dead organs are of no use to anyone. The problem many people have with the idea is that we see a person who is breathing and whose heart is beating. For organ donation to occur, that person must be declared dead by someone else. I worry about whom that someone else might be and whether they might have other priorities, and even whether their criteria for brain death are correct. If the ventilator is disconnected, will the patient stop breathing? I’m not doubting what you have said, but this will certainly push me to research the subject further.

JimG

Okey Doke, Jim - those are good questions. Let’s try to go one at a time.

The someone else who makes the declaration is a duly qualified physician. Nobody but physicians. In centers where organs would be harvested, they are physicians who have specific protocols to follow for a check-list of medically accepted criteria for death. When the organ team is called to a hospital that doesn’t normally have donors, the donor team has the protocols, and can teach them to the physicians at the hospital. The criteria have been laboriously and VERY extensively worked on by joint teams of all kinds of pysicians and scientists. In most states those criteria are written into the laws and into the reglations of the state medical boards.

As to their priorities - in most cases, the physician who makes at least the first diagnosis of death is the dead patient’s own physician - so THAT physician’s motives are the care and best interest of the patient in question. More often than not, secondary opinions are sought from specialists such as neuroligists or other specialized physicians.

The criteria for death (notice I’m not saying “brain death” because there is no difference between what most people call “brain death” and just DEATH… when you’re “brain dead”, you’re dead - period) are extremely well worked out in detail and in consensus from scienists, physiologists, and physicians from all over the world.

A critical care mailing list I’m a member of has just been discussing a case, and relates a familiar story: if a dead patient anad potential donor does not perfectly and scrupulously meet ALL the criteria 100%, the organ donor procurement team will reject the patient and harvest nothing. The criteria must be 100% met, not 99.99%,

Yes - if a dead patient is removed from the ventilator (I’ve done this) there is no breathing. At that point it is completely incorrect to say the patient is breathing. The ventilator is ventilating the patient by pushing in fresh gas and letting out old gas. But there is no breathing.

In many, many deaths, not at all involving organ donation, the death involves a respiratory arest occurring prior to the cardiac arrest. In othe cases, it’s the other way around. It is very rare for both to happen simultaneously. All the other processes of life that do not involve something so obvious as muscular motion (which is what spntaneous respiration and cardiac rhythm involve) do not happen at once. They happen over time. But - once the heart stops, if breathing continues, it will stop in a few minutes. Similarly, if both breathing and heartbeat are present and the breathing stops, the heart will follow in a few minutes.

So - the criteria for death are very precisely defined by the best, most current state of the art in medicine today. Those declaring death have no monetary interest or gain from the patient’s death. Organs may not be legally sold, and anything approaching comercialization of the process is clearly condemned by the church.

If you happen to see a dead person on a ventilator, you’re not seeing a person who is breahing with a beating heart. You’re seeing a body that has stopped breathing and in which there would be no respiration without the ventilator, and you’re seeing a heart that absoluutely would not be beating unless the respiratoin were being done artificially.

I hope this helps.

 

[Paul_W]

I’d like to return to your original question, comparing St. Max Kolbe to an organ donor.

St. Max faced an unavoidable evil. The Nazis were determined to murder a fixed number of innocent victims. There was nothing he could do to reduce the number of victims, and he was powerless to mitigate the total punishment in any way. By allowing himself to become one of the victims, the amount of evil has not changed–at the end of the week, the same number of people will have been cruelly murdered. However, some good will come from his choice, when the survivors see his unshakable faith in Jesus’ promise of eternal life, and his Christ-like brotherly love. (As a separate issue, a weak, single man, has been substituted for a healthy man with a family, which further adds to the beneficial outcome without increasing the amount of evil.)

The case of a person who wishes to donate life-sustaining organs is quite different. Prior to their decision, there is Zero evil in the equation. Two people are on separate paths toward natural deaths. If no decision is made, nature eventually takes its course, and because each death is God’s will, there is no evil in the separate outcomes. (Sadness, perhaps, in the eyes of the foolish, but not evil.)

However, if a person chooses to end their life by donating life-sustaining organs, that is an intrinsically evil action. It doesn’t matter that there may be a beneficial outcome for the recipient, the donor’s “deliberate suicide” is evil, where no evil would otherwise have occurred.

If the donor’s soul has left their lifeless body, there is no evil in removing their organs. Determining whether that condition has been met, however, may be problematic.

If a person wishes to donate non-life-sustaining organs (a single kidney, bone marrow, etc.) there may be some element of risk (complications during surgery, subsequent infection, potential (coincidental) failure of the remaining kidney, etc.) but because there is no intent to end one’s life, there is no evil in that decision. In this case, organ donation is certainly noble.

 

[pyocote]

Hey Kellie, here you go.

**Respect for the person and scientific research **

2296 Organ transplants are in conformity with the moral law if the physical and psychological dangers and risks to the donor are proportionate to the good that is sought for the recipient. Organ donation after death is a noble and meritorious act and is to be encouraged as an expression of generous solidarity. It is not morally acceptable if the donor or his proxy has not given explicit consent. Moreover, it is not morally admissible directly to bring about the disabling mutilation or death of a human being, even in order to delay the death of other persons.

 

[pyocote]

My opinion is the following:
The term of “organ donation” should be abolished.
Organs should never be donated, they should be taken by force because it is the right of a living human been to seek the means of keeping alive as long as he doesn’t go against the rights of other human been that is ALIVE. The rights of a corpse (that is what a dead body is) should not matter, because the corpse will be rotten soon or sooner. So, why should someone care about that?

When those people whose plane crashed in the Andean mountains in the 70’s and they were starving to death and they start eating parts of their dead partners, that was acceptable because they were going to die. Why is not acceptable here?
Finally… who cares if that is acceptable or not? If it saves lives, it is. It is selfishness to allow the organs to rotten instead. That would be a sin!

 

[Rascalking]

If it wasn’t for organ donation, I wouldn’t have in my life a person I consider one of my closest friends. A girl whose brings love and joy into the hearts of all her friends. A girl who, if it wasn’t for organ donation, would not be here on this earth.

Just remember the recipients that save lives because of organ donors.

 

[Joseph_L_Varga]

About a year ago I specifically took a trip to the DMV, just to remove the “organ donor” designation from my driver’s license. I did this after I had been an “organ donor” for many years, and I did it because of the abuses I have become aware of.

There was an article in N. England J. Med. where doctors removed the hearts of babies who had cardiac arrest but were not brain dead, and transplanted those hearts into other babies. In other words, the hearts of the original babies could have been restarted (cardio-pulmonary resuscitation), and as a matter of fact they have been restarted - but not in the original babies. The original babies have been declared unworthy for life as soon as they went into cardiac arrest, their hearts were removed, transplanted, and restarted in the recipient babies. The whole article provoked a strong wave of criticism. And this is just one high-profile example of abuse, one that was published in a leading medical journal, and the team of authors apparently didn’t see just how wrong they were, for else they wouldn’t have done this to dozens of babies. They (the authors) apparently just saw this as a new great achievement in organ transplantation.

I have been following this field for at least 2-3 years now, and the reports of abuses are becoming more numerous. One only needs to search the archives of such websites as lifesitenews dot com. There is a push to use “cardiopulmonary death” instead of brain death - exactly what they did with the babies. In other words, the doctor will deliberately not try to resuscitate the patient who went into cardiac arrest, and will instead remove his/her heart in order to be transplanted into someone else. Another trend I see, there are numerous reports of people recovering after they have been declared “brain dead”. I don’t know, is this because the doctors are misdiagnosing brain death, and does this mean that the instruments they are relying on are less trustworthy than they believe they are, but the fact is, I see these reports almost weekly at pro-life web sites and also here at CAF in the World News section. There was a recent thread on CAF about someone who recovered after she has been pronounced brain dead, and the doctors wanted to remove this patient’s organs, but the family members refused to give consent. And after this, the “brain dead” patient recovered. How embarrassing.

My point is, there’s too much going on - misdiagnosis, and even deliberate abuse. When a doctor uses cardiopulmonary death as a criterion for death, and chooses to remove the heart instead of trying to resuscitate the patient, that’s pretty bad. I’m not an MD myself, and have no idea how often do such abuses happen. But I’m not a total outsider, either (pharmacist, PhD in chemistry, spent 20+ years working at universities and hospitals), and the reports I have seen convinced me that one is not safe as an “organ donor” from misdiagnosis of death and worse, deliberate murder. Thus, while I’m not against organ donation in principle, I chose to remove myself from the organ donor list.

Also, one of President Obama’s “czars” (maybe the regulatory czar Cass Sunstein but I don’t remember for sure) has been vocal in proposing that anyone should be considered an organ donor, unless he/she explicitely opts out. Well, for now, you are not an organ donor unless you explicitely opt in. But if they change the system, I will make sure to explicitely *opt out *of the pool of organ donors.

I think it is a “culture of death” thing to take a utilitarian view of “how can I use this person’s organs”, and to deliberately let people die instead of resuscitating them, as it happened with dozens of babies whose hearts were removed for organ transplantation. I’m convinced such instances will only increase in the future, as long as other forms of legalized murder (abortion, assisted suicide, euthanasia) gain more widespread acceptance in society.

 

[rayne89]

Can somebody please tell me if organ donating is ok with Catholic teaching?

If not, please quote me the CCC . Thanks

Love Kellie

Gee I sure hope so since I’ll need a heart transplant in the future. Actually, yes the Church is ok with organ donation. Which makes me happy because I rather live past my 40’s. From the Catechism of the Catholic Church “Organ donation after death is a noble and meritorious act and is to be encouraged as a expression of generous solidarity.”

 

[JimG]

Yes, the Church approves organ donation after death. But that’s where the discussion begins.

 

[Dragonslayer]

Yes, the Church approves organ donation after death. But that’s where the discussion begins.

Exactly right JimG.

My understanding, and I am happy to be corrected, is that organs MUST be removed while the organs are still working, ie while the patient is still alive. Obviously, patients may be brain dead, or surviving solely on life support, but doctors have virtually changed the “definition of death” to ensure they can access working, viable organs.

Subsequently, the action of having your organs removed will be the direct cause of your death, and therefore cannot be allowed.

The exception of course is the removal of an organ such as a kidney, that will not result in your death.

The more controversial and heartwrenching side to this matter is that we should also not accept an organ for the same reason, ie. it has directly caused the death of another person.

 

[Joseph_L_Varga]

Exactly right JimG.

My understanding, and I am happy to be corrected, is that organs MUST be removed while the organs are still working, ie while the patient is still alive. Obviously, patients may be brain dead, or surviving solely on life support, but doctors have virtually changed the “definition of death” to ensure they can access working, viable organs.

Subsequently, the action of having your organs removed will be the direct cause of your death, and therefore cannot be allowed.

The exception of course is the removal of an organ such as a kidney, that will not result in your death.

The more controversial and heartwrenching side to this matter is that we should also not accept an organ for the same reason, ie. it has directly caused the death of another person.

That’s also the impression I got, namely that there are doctors out there who changed the definition of death from “brain death” to “cardiopulmonary death”. And the problem is, if you are in a traffic accident, you don’t know in whose hands will you fall. Will it be a doctor who uses “brain death” as the definition of death, or will it be someone who uses “cardiopulmonary death”?

With the* N. England J. Med.* article I mentioned earlier, the logic was like this: these babies went into cardiac arrest, therefore we consider them dead, and we are going to remove their hearts and transplant them into other babies. To which the critics replied, “No, the babies were not dead. You should have applied cardiopulmonary resuscitation. You (transplant surgeons) are the ones who killed these babies, when you failed to resuscitate them, even though they were not brain dead”. Then, the transplant surgeons replied, “yes, but these babies suffered brain damage, or were suffering from other serious conditions, and were going to die soon anyway, even if we resuscitated them”.

And this is where the real reasons came to light. They could have resuscitated the babies, they could have restarted their hearts, but they deliberately chose not to. Instead, they transplanted and restarted those hearts in other (recipient) babies, who, in these transplant surgeons’ opinions, were more worthy of life.

This begs the question: are they using two different sets of rules, one set of rules for babies who are otherwise healthy, who will be deemed worthy of life and resuscitated in case of cardiac arrest, and then again, another set of rules for babies who suffer from other illnesses when they go into cardiac arrest? Are these latter babies deemed unworthy of life, unworthy of resuscitation, and their hearts grabbed and transplanted into other babies, whom are deemed more worthy of life?

Sadly, there are surgeons out there who think like this, and use two sets of rules: one for otherwise healthy babies, and another one for babies who suffer from other problems, and are not expected to live long, in case that they are resuscitated. And at this point, the utilitarian logic kicks in: “This baby is sick, suffered brain damage, etc, and he/she is not going to live long, anyway, even if we resuscitate him/her. Let’s better remove his/her heart, and give it to another baby, instead of trying to resuscitate this baby.” And this utilitarian logic is clearly not permissible, and it justifies murder, according to Catholic teaching on ethics.

To complicate matters more, we have people who woke up and recovered after they have been pronounced “brain dead”.