The Political Hat

     Another “quick takes” on items where there is too little to say to make a complete article, but is still important enough to comment on.

     The focus this time: Reaping the harvest, grimly.

     First, a little mood music:

     Carrying on…

     It’s not killing if you re-define death, dontchaknow.

“Good motives sometimes lead to terrible places. Such is the case with the understandable desire to increase the organ supply, which for years has tempted some bioethicists to stretch the ethics of transplant medicine beyond the breaking point.

“Now, in the New York Times, three doctors promote the idea of ‘redefining death’ to allow patients to be killed for their organs. First, the authors lament the difficulty of obtaining healthy organs from people whose hearts stop irreversibly after the removal of life support. They also bemoan the shortage of ‘brain-dead’ donors. Then, after discussing a controversial approach that restarts circulation after cardiac arrest (but not to the brain) — which I have posted about before — they get down to the nitty-gritty of redefining death. From ‘Donor Organs Are Too Rare. We Need a New Definition of Death’:

“‘The solution, we believe, is to broaden the definition of brain death to include irreversibly comatose patients on life support. Using this definition, these patients would be legally dead regardless of whether a machine restored the beating of their heart.’

 “So long as the patient had given informed consent for organ donation, removal would proceed without delay. The ethical debate about normothermic regional perfusion would be moot. And we would have more organs available for transplantation.’

 “Then, they depersonalize people with severe cognitive disabilities:

“’Apart from increased organ availability, there is also a philosophical reason for wanting to broaden the definition of brain death. The brain functions that matter most to life are those such as consciousness, memory, intention and desire. Once those higher brain functions are irreversibly gone, is it not fair to say that a person (as opposed to a body) has ceased to exist?’

“No, it is not! Redefining as dead someone who is actually living would subjectivize the value of human life. We are either all equal while alive, or we are not. And if we are not, kiss universal human rights goodbye and say hello to increased oppression and exploitation of those deemed by those with power to be expendable or less than human.”

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