A procedure called “donation after cardiac death” is being allowed and encouraged by the federal government, organ banks, and medical doctors as a way to increase organ donations. This protocol used now more commonly for infant heart transplants is frighteningly immoral and sets to redefine death declarations.
The method, technically known as “transplantation after declaration of cardiocirculatory death (DCD),” allows doctors to declare death following stoppage of the heart, rather than by the more certain brain death criteria. Then, as quickly as 75 seconds to five minutes after the declaration, doctors can slice into the baby’s chest to harvest the heart.
The new method of death declaration has been brought to light because of a report in the New England Journal of Medicine that highlighted three cases of DCD studied at Children’s Hospital In Denver. Three babies on life support who showed little brain function but who did not meet the criteria for brain death were taken off ventilators and their hearts harvested and transplanted in other infants.
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Of course, legal and ethical issues immediately come to mind. Most state laws, including Colorado’s, specify that declarations of death must be based on total loss of brain function, or heart function that is irreversible. Many ethicists believe that the Denver cases do not meet either criterion. But there’s no move to investigate or prosecute as of yet.
Robert Veatch, professor of medical ethics at Georgetown University said: “In my opinion, it’s an open-and-shut-case. They don’t have irreversibility, and they don’t have death.” Dr. Michael Grodin, professor of health law, bioethics and human rights at Boston University School of Public Health, echoes Veatch’s position and calls the procedure a misguided endeavor. “If you’re going to take out the heart, obviously the heart starts up again or you couldn’t do the transplant, so it’s clearly not irreversible,” Grodin says.
Technically, the heart could certainly be restarted in the donor infant, but it is not. That’s of great concern to Dr. Grodin. “To my standard, the person is not dead. Taking the heart of somebody [when there’s a] question of whether they’re dead or not is a serious concern.”
Study participant Dr. Mark Boucek, who supports the new declaration of death criteria, says concerns of the conscience can be eliminated by transparency in the process of deciding when and how to donate infant organs, based on whether further treatment is futile. “I think the public knows when death occurs,” he said.
While the public likely understands when death occurs, it’s the medical establishment that is clearly redefining the term “death” to suit their own agenda. Removing the moral certitude in death declarations as defined by the laws of God and under civil law opens the door to egregious ethical abuses that we’re just beginning to see.
Dr. John Lantos, another bioethicist and pediatrician at the University of Chicago says problems will arise, creating “a temptation to bend the standards of futility in order to increase the supply of donors.” That sentiment is reiterated by Dr. Steven LeFrak from the Washington University School of Medicine. He says, “While it sounds very erudite for the authors [of the study] to refer to withdrawing ‘futile’ care in their population, what exactly this means is neither defined by them nor is there a generally accepted meaning of this term in medical or medical ethics circles.”
On the other side of the ethical aisle are the usual bleeding-heart arguments (honestly no pun intended given the serious nature of the topic at hand). Some reasons given by doctors and bioethicists for employing DCD and the accompanying organ harvest include: preserving life-saving resources by not wasting viable organs; offering families a chance to make an act of kindness and get some solace out of a bad situation by having their child’s organs live on in another; serving a need for parents wanting to donate their infants’ organs; and increasing infant organ donations.
Clearly the handwriting is on the wall. Any unwanted but viable baby’s treatment could be conveniently designated as futile so the killing/harvesting/transplanting process can begin. Priorities that once served the best interests of the dying by administering treatment that would avoid premature death are now being perverted to serve society instead.
Dr. Robert Spaemann, philosopher from the University of Munich, believes that this points to a societal change that is being forcibly engineered. In 2005 he told the Pontifical Academy of Sciences that the goal is to move to a society where people see organ donation as a “social responsibility” and where donating organs would be accepted as a normal part of dying. Already in place are federal regulations that require institutions to contact local organ procurement organizations concerning death, or impending death, to insure that the family will be approached at the appropriate time by a professional skilled in presenting the proposal of organ donation.
DCD is a logical extension of the abortion-prone mercy-killing culture of death that is advancing in this country and the world. Really, what else can we expect but the continued blurring of the line between life and death until the eventual elimination of that line is reached?
August 20th, 2008 at 5:15 am
This is scary. They do something like that to one of my children and there will be hell to pay. Someone will pay with something OTHER than money.
August 20th, 2008 at 6:27 am
Yes… that’s something out of a Horror Film. The human body is now to become a shopping cart. And it’s the same people making you need an organ transplant, doing it. Welcome to the economy of the 21st Century. Hope you like it. You voted for it. People are such idiots.
August 20th, 2008 at 7:01 am
Well the American population just enjoys taking it up the ass so much! This will probably get expanded and become compulsory like the article insinuates, the public will want someone else to do something about it and nothing will get done and your brother will die on the operating table, instead of reviving him they will harvest him! Just like China, just like the plethora of futurist book scenarios have imagined.
Their was a time in my country after the whiskey rebellion the corrupt representatives were taken out of their offices and literally tarred and feathered! What’s wrong with reinstituting this glorious American Tradition?
August 20th, 2008 at 8:36 am
Some sick shit out of a sci-fi movie… wait a minute, it’s real?
August 20th, 2008 at 8:52 am
I think I’m going to be sick. What concerns me is that so many mothers and fathers don’t know about this and it could be happening to them right now-they’ll mourn the loss of their child without ever being the wiser. The sick evil joke of the elite is that the parents will take comfort that their baby’s organs would have helped save another child’s life-thinking that this was a blessing in the midst of tragedy instead of a premeditated murder to rob one life for another life. Its all part of the ritualistic and methodical dehuminization of mankind. We must spread the word about this to everyone-especially expectant mothers. We should protest infront of hospitals. We should pray that this evil is defeated. And may God comfort the families and punish this evil eternally. And if the Almighty would have His People deal out said punishmet, we would welcome the call to punish such wickedness.
August 20th, 2008 at 9:02 am
Organ transplants and the drugs that go with them are big money.Do you think they are going to let that go over a little technicality? The statement I thought was interesting is that the public knows when death occurs. The public knows very little and then they are in an emotionally charged situation like the death of a child. These poor parents give everything up to the doctors, the “professionals.” Often these professionals are on power trips and think they know best. Often times they are thinking about their own careers.
August 20th, 2008 at 9:07 am
A sister of mine lives in a state run elder care facility. They were upset with her for getting an outside doctor recently. She noted how the state doctor she used to go to would put off treating her and wouldn’t take regular blood tests. She also noted that other people in the facility die off quite regularly and are usually diagnosed with cancer when it is too late.
I told her it is not in the best interest of the state to treat someone who is sick. It is much cheaper to let them die. By God’s grace she’ll get the treatment she needs and then get out of that facility.
What a sick world.
August 20th, 2008 at 9:38 am
God has allowed evil to prevade in this world, and all because diebolt machines have patended intdelectual property and we can’t verify who wins elections.
August 20th, 2008 at 10:14 am
Well, they are just following China. They imprison people there and if they happen to have blood and tissue matches, they are killed and sometimes it is even on the way to the airport where the organs can fly off to the highest bidder. Now I hear they are snatching young girls off the street and doing it.
Pretty soon our prisoners will be under the same threat.
August 20th, 2008 at 10:18 am
these people need to be stopped, even though they may be puppets they need to be held accountable
August 20th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
Here’s our future: 1.they collect DNA on all citizens (happening now)2. they need an organ for one of the elite 3. they check their database 3. they find YOU have what they need 4. you have an ‘unfortunate’ accident or 5. you disappear 6. your body is never found 7. you become a sad statistic.
Do you understand how the dots connect???
We are being grown for the elitist harvest.
Cops and Robbers Reply:
January 17th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
800,000 people are reported missing without a trace every year.
Only a very small percentage are a result of homicide, kidnapping,
Alzheimer s, or accidental drownings, and lost in the woods.
August 20th, 2008 at 12:50 pm
doctors will be delt with Jesus will bing his sword and he will not bring peace with him
August 20th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
I need some names and pics to add to my growing list of American Traitors which will be coming out on a website later this year.
Coffeelover,,,,,,
August 20th, 2008 at 5:12 pm
Endgame: Recut -http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6360936680750838998
August 20th, 2008 at 7:46 pm
Sadly, most people refuse to see any dots at all. Maybe they are asleep…I feel like I am in the twillight zone.
August 21st, 2008 at 4:26 am
One glaring omission in this article. Who were the babies who got the heart transplants. Were they babies of VERY RICH PARENTS…or were the hearts given to children who really needed them, were on the waiting list, and would have surely died if they hadn’t gotten them forthwith. My money is on parents who could well afford to either slip the doctors a nice little addition to their pay packet or politically connected ones. I’ll take 100-1 odds is wasn’t some poor middle class family. Any takers?
August 21st, 2008 at 8:46 am
The thing that pisses me off more than anything is that ALL of this would not be necessary if they would just allow stem cell research. Donor transplants would not be necessary. Everyone would have their own organs to transplant. But God forbid these bastards don’t make money off everything.
August 21st, 2008 at 8:50 am
NoNWOhere……………I AGREE WITH YOU 100%
August 21st, 2008 at 10:16 am
johnQ shut the f*ck up about the Comet Holmes.
August 21st, 2008 at 9:13 pm
Kingsman says: its true they let you die of cancer… I went to the same doctor for years about an itchy bit in the small of my back… he pooh poohed it.
I got banned from that medical center when the receptionist was rude… like r-e-v-o-l-t-i-n-g, and I tod her to brighten up a bit… so I go to another doctor and he diagnoses melanoma and surgically removed it the next day!!
I ain’t no racist but ya hear about the Afros that got syph and were never treated … the exact same sh*t goes on every fuggin day… at the hospital the woman was rude the doctor was drugged to the eyeballs… like she was full of drugs.
I was the only one in the hospital at about 4:45 pm for a 1;30 appointment and I look behind the curtain and it was like being on the set of Pink Velvet… hard core lesbian activity… I said is there ever gonna be a goddam doctor and two armed security men were there immediately.
January 21st, 2009 at 8:01 am
This sounds like the book “Coma” by Robin Cook. I thought it was just science fiction back then. I guess not.
January 21st, 2009 at 8:00 pm
they do this at funeral parlors also right before they take the body to the graveyard
after the third day
thank god for islam no sick mortuary person can touch your body
just friends
January 21st, 2009 at 8:03 pm
when a babys born they keep the placenta
if you dont want them to
you can take it home
but better watch where they bag it before they give it to you
follow em down the hal
until they hand it to you
demand so