Are you aware that if you are in an accident in the U.S. your organs may be surgically removed without your consent?
The Washington Post reports that "a new trend" in organic harvesting is underway within minutes of cardiac arrest. This government sanctioned program euphemistically called, "donation after cardiac death" (DCD) accelerates the organ "donation" process.
"Some doctors and bioethicists, however, say the practice raises the disturbing specter of transplant surgeons preying on dying patients for their organs, possibly pressuring doctors and families to discontinue treatment, adversely affecting donors' care in their final days and even hastening their deaths."
"The person is not dead yet," said Jerry A. Menikoff, an associate professor of law, ethics and medicine at the University of Kansas. "They are going to be dead, but we should be honest and say that we're starting to remove the organs a few minutes before they meet the legal definition of death."
In Denver, surgeons at Children's Hospital wait 75 seconds before starting to remove hearts from infants.
The number of these "donations" more than doubled from 268 in 2003 to at least 605 in 2006, enabling surgeons to transplant more than 1,200 additional kidneys, livers, lungs, hearts and other organs. "It's starting to go up exponentially," said James Burdick, who leads organ-donor efforts at the federal Department of Health and Human Services.
The Post reports: "When surgeons resurrected what was then called "non-beating heart" donation in the 1990s, critics called it ghoulish and said it raised a host of ethical questions. Some called it tantamount to murder."
However, the race to catch-up to China's policy of live vivisection organ removal from prisoners is underway right here in the US where, the Post reports, the trend is expected to accelerate this year.
So far as we know, our right to informed consent--which means the right to say, NO--has been abrogated without so much as a public hearing!
~ more... ~
No comments:
Post a Comment