do YOU want to live forever? What would you choose?, page 1

reply to post by nasacarl

My mother is a Liver transplant survivor.
During her procedure, on the first trans plant any way, it was found that her original liver had allowed for the arterial artery to expand to twice the size of it's original size, thus creating an episode of internal bleeding and allowed the liver to essentially die, even after another emergency surgery to cap or cauterize the existing hemorrhage. They then had to conduct a secondary transplant and it eventually allowed for the organ to take over the bodies excercises of the particular necessity of what the liver is supposed to do. But, getting to my point, the transplant has saved her life, but at great expense and undeniably the lives of two "Acknowledged" organ donors to do so.
During this time, I had privilege's of speaking to top authorities of the transplant procedures and options, one that came up was "Organ Culturing" which is an on going practice of the Johns Hopkins Medical Research Organization. Quite amazing stuff.
The ethical implications are somewhat "indifferent" for different individuals perceptions of such procedures taking place, but I would have to agree it would be categorized as a "Unethical Science" for people of the religious or humanitarian sect of our population.
And this is possibly why:

January 20, 2009
The Bioethics Drive to Kill for Organs Grows
The agitation to increase the pool of potential organ donors by allowing people who are unquestionably not dead, but who have profound cognitive disabilities, to be killed for their organs continues. An article in the American Medical News, primarily concerned with organ procurement after “heart death,” is the latest example. From the story:

Other critics said the concept of transplanting a heart after cardiac death isn’t logical. “If someone is pronounced dead on the basis of irreversible loss of heart function, after all, it would not be possible for heart function to be restored in another body,” wrote Robert M. Veatch, PhD, a Georgetown University medical ethics professor, in an Aug. 14, 2008, NEJM essay. “One cannot say a heart is irreversibly stopped if, in fact, it will be
restarted.”

This is to sow intentional confusion. The heart can beat outside the body because it has its own nerve clusters, and no one would say that the body from which it came was not dead. The issue is whether the heart could spontaneously restart beating, not whether the heart itself is so degraded it can no longer function.

Here’s the advocacy part:

Veatch said the dead-donor rule should be changed to allow patients or their families to opt for a standard that takes a loss of functioning consciousness (short of brain death) as another kind of death. Physicians could then procure hearts “in the absence of irreversible heart stoppage.”

Robert D. Truog, MD, said the Denver cases illustrate the underlying problem in how death is defined to facilitate organ donation and transplantation. He said it is time to reconsider the dead-donor rule. “The existing paradigm, built around the dead-donor rule, has increasingly pushed us into more and more implausible definitions of death, until eventually we end up with such a tortured definition that nobody’s going to believe it,” said Dr. Truog, professor of medical ethics and anesthesia at Harvard Medical School in Massachusetts.

This is known in the trade as “redefining death,” and if it ever comes to pass–people like Terri Schiavo could be called dead instead of unconscious and harvested to death. Moreover, we are not being “pushed” into this. Some want to choose it. It is our job to make sure it doesn’t happen.

Posted by Wesley J. Smith
Posted in Clinical / Medical, Organ Donation / Transplantation
Permalink

bioethics.com...

And though this procedure of transplant ability has saved my mothers life, she is rendered with the undeniable fact that someone had to die, not just one but two people, in order for her to live, and with this kind of unwanted mental impression left on the recipient of such transplant receivers, it opens a feeling of both "Gratification" and at moments "Unfolding" guilt issues.

I believe it was "Galen 200AD" that had stated that "The only true mortal enemy of mankind is their life giving organs, once they cease to exist under their forwarding reasons, man will surely come to his death."

Not an exact quote, but rather insightful for a man of that particular era.