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OrganFacts.net

The truth behind
organ donation
& transplants

The truth behind organ donation & transplants


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… The truth behind organ donation & organ transplants

OPPOSE
ORGAN
DONATION

Dr David W Evans

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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]

An extract

Speaking up for organ donors

by Ellen Bridget Linde, RN, BSN

(As a nurse, Ellen B. Linde is guided by life-respecting values of “doing good” & “doing no harm”. In this article, she reports on her detailed research into organ harvesting practices and protocols, and concludes that harvesting organs from living patients is ethically wrong. Read full article at NursingCenter.com website.)

-------- Some of Linde’s comments: --------

“Some (nurses), believing that removing vital organs is what kills the patient, view organ donation performed under current criteria for pronouncing death 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.”

... “The so-called dead donor rule is the legal and ethical standard that requires patients to be declared dead before the removal of life-sustaining organs for transplantation. But what is death and when does it occur? These are complex and controversial questions.”

... “defining death as brain death also presents ethical quandaries. Robert D. Truog, MD, director of clinical ethics at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Mass., writes that using brain death as the standard legitimatizes (sic) organ removal from bodies that continue to have circulation and respiration ..., and this ‘fails to correspond to any coherent biological or philosophical understanding of death.’ ”

... “Where do I stand on organ donation? When I started researching this article, I was an avid, outspoken advocate for organ donation, but I’ve since had a change of heart. Shewmon’s study of 175 patients who met the full criteria for whole-brain death led me to conclude that it’s ethically wrong to recover organs from a person who’s still breathing - regardless of whether or not breathing is achieved through mechanical ventilation.”

( Extract from article in Nursing 2009: Speaking up for organ donors by Ellen Bridget Linde, RN, BSN)


*... Shewmon DA. “Brainstem death,” “brain death” and death: a critical re-evaluation of the purported equivalence. Issues Law Med. 1998;14(2): 125-145.
Linde notes that “Shewmon reported on 175 cases in which the bodies of patients reliably diagnosed as fulfilling the whole-brain death criterion (in general, they didn’t have brain waves) were maintained for varying periods, in some cases years, with little aggressive intensive care besides mechanical ventilation.” She also notes that these patients exhibited various body functions, including: “wound healing, successful gestation of a fetus in 13 women, sexual maturation and growth, and, most disturbing of all, cardiovascular and hormonal stress responses to incision for organ retrieval.”


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