Thursday, October 30, 2008

How not to promote organ donation

Julian Savulescu, the British ethicist who opined that religious doctors should shut up and perform, is back.

This time he's advocating the donation of organs from people who are not dead or dying, but who have "suffered such severe injury that they would be permanently unconscious, like Terry Schiavo, who would be allowed to die anyway by removal of their medical treatment."

Hat tip to BioEdge.com

2 comments:

Suricou Raven said...

Why not? If someone no longer has a use for organs, it makes perfect sense to transplant. To not do so means a good chance someone else is going to die needlessly.

LifeEthics.org said...

First, do no harm.

We don't take life to save life.

With the whole brain death or cardiovascular death criteria, the person is no longer a living organism.

One aspect of the doctrine of "inalienable right to life" is that no one can kill you and you aren't ethically allowed to intend your own death. No one can volunteer to have other people intentionally and purposefully act to end his or her life, any more than he can kill another.