© OrganFacts.net

… The truth behind organ donation & organ transplants

OPPOSE
ORGAN
DONATION

Dr David W Evans , Retired Consultant in Cardiology, says: “Human organ transplantation is Wrong because it necessitates the abuse of the dying or harming the healthy. Doctors should not be involved in such things… I don’t know how any doctor can operate on his patient not for his good but knowingly to do him harm.” [more]

OPPOSE
ORGAN
DONATION

Dr David J Hill , Retired consultant anaesthetist, says: “The Diagnosis of Death for Transplant Purposes has no international consensus and in the UK… depends upon testing only a few cubic centimetres of tissue in the brainstem for loss of function… Live organs can only come from living bodies. ” [more]

OPPOSE
ORGAN
DONATION

Dr Paul A Byrne , neonatalogist and pediatrician, says: “In order to be suitable for transplant, (heart, liver, lungs, kidneys and pancreas) need to be removed from the donor before respiration and circulation cease. Otherwise, these organs are not suitable, since damage to the organs occurs within a brief time after circulation of blood with oxygen stops.” [more]

OPPOSE
ORGAN
DONATION

Dr John B Shea , retired diagnostic radiologist & Fellow of Royal College of Physicians & Surgeons of Canada, says: “Many physicians have serious and well-considered concerns about morality of human organ transplantation … the general public has not been properly informed about what really happens when organs are retrieved.” [more]

OPPOSE
ORGAN
DONATION

Bereaved mother (Bernice Jones) says: “ Brain death is not death” and “organ donation is very deceptive”. “Families are led to believe that their loved ones are dead, but in fact they are alive. You must be alive to be a vital organ donor.” [more]

OPPOSE
ORGAN
DONATION

Nurse Ellen B Linde , senior graduate teaching assistant, University of Scranton, says: “Some, believing that removing vital organs is what kills the patient, view organ donation… as an act of killing… not all nurses are comfortable with a value system driven primarily by the needs of transplant recipients rather than by the needs of the potential donor.” [more]

OPPOSE
ORGAN
DONATION

Earl E. Appleby Jr , Director, Citizens United Resisting Euthanasia, says: “Anyone unwise enough to have signed an organ donor card also has legitimate cause for concern. Would you trust a doctor who regards your body “not as an organism in need of healing but as a container of biological useful materials” … That’s exactly what organ donors do. ” [more]

OPPOSE
ORGAN
DONATION

Michael Potts , medical ethicist, says: “Any action that directly causes the death of a patient, even if it is for the good of others, opposes the goal of medicine not to harm that individual patient… It is precisely whether transplantation kills the donor that is the key issue that cuts to the heart of the goals of medicine.” [more]

The Nasty Side of Organ Transplanting

Back Stop Forward

An extract

Brain Death is a Recent Invention

by Dr David W Evans

EDITOR —Your explicit recognition that “brain death” is a recent invention for transplant purposes is most welcome and should do much to expose the fallacies and fudgings associated with this supposed new form of death, which have been hidden from public and professional view for far too long. ⁽¹⁾ …

The review to which you refer notes the cultural emphasis of Margaret Lock’s study. ⁽²⁾ More detailed consideration of the philosophical and scientific aspects will be found in the anthology by Potts et al, which was not available to Lock when she was writing. ⁽³⁾ Since then, thanks to the excellent rapid response facility provided by bmj.com, the most significant development has been the wide dissemination of knowledge about the dangers of the apnoea test (which is a crucial element in the schedule of tests laid down by the Department of Health for the diagnosis of “brain stem death” or “death for transplant purposes”). Thanks, particularly, to the work of Coimbra, it is now clear that apnoea testing may exacerbate the brain damage and even prove lethal. ⁽⁴⁾ That being so, and bearing in mind that the test can be of no possible therapeutic benefit to the patient so tested, its use is clearly unethical.…

References

1. Editor’s choice. Deep fears. BMJ 2002;324(7348). (8 June.)

2. Gray C. “Twice dead: organ transplants and the reinvention of death” by Margaret Lock [reviewed] BMJ. 2002;324:1401.

3. Potts M, Byrne PA, Nilges R, editors. Beyond brain death—the case against brain based criteria for human death. Dordrecht: Kluwer; 2000.

4. Coimbra CG. Implications of ischemic penumbra for the diagnosis of brain death. Braz J Med Biol Res. 1999;32:1479–1487. [PubMed]

(Extract from “Brain death is a recent invention”, David W Evans, retired physician, BMJ. 2002 September 14; 325(7364): 598. Viewed Dec 18, 2010 at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1124114/ )