Organ Donation: another assault on life

I have decided to re-post on the subject of Organ Donation, as it is some years since I last mentioned this important and misunderstood subject, and I have rather more readers now than I did have then...


Until I researched it a bit, I had not realised that for hearts (and certain other vital organs) to be transplanted successfully, they must be taken from a living body, as they deteriorate beyond usefulness on death. And that in order to facilitate that, the medical profession has introduced the notion of ‘brain death’ to legitimise the practice.


This has disturbed many nurses and others, as they cannot believe that the donor is dead when his or her heart is beating, flesh is warm, and (in one case) when he put his arm around the nurse just before they were about to remove his heart.


So what do our medical professionals do? Inject a drug that paralyses the donor - and then proceed.


The parallels with the murderous assaults on the unborn in the womb are extraordinary: the start of life re-defined contrary to the evidence, the injection of tranquilisers or anaesthetics prior to the killing...


A good source of information is the Anscombe Centre (formerly the Linacre Centre). In their article on criteria for death, they comment on the problems with the (relatively) recent notion of 'brain death' as the determining criterion: 


The Anscombe Centre's own view is that `brain death' protocols are insufficient for establishing the death of the body: we have become increasingly convinced by evidence suggesting that integrated bodily activity can continue after `brain death' has been diagnosed. There have been documented cases of `brain dead' patients maintaining bodily functions for months or even years: pregnant women have gone through pregnancy, children have grown up and passed through puberty, etc. 3 Moreover, it is well-known to transplant teams that heartbeating donors move when organs are taken, unless they are paralysed by drugs, and that their blood pressure goes up when the incision is made. It is worth noting that some anaesthetists recommend that the supposed `cadaver' be anaesthetised when his/her organs are retrieved. Most organ donors are unaware that their hearts may be beating when their organs are taken, and that they may be pink, warm, able to heal wounds, fight infections, respond to stimuli, etc.


(Link here, and see also their 'Definition of Death' comments)


In 2008 a government commissioned report, after studying a huge body of evidence, came to the 'wrong' conclusion that the consent of organ donors should be explicit not presumed: however, the political class did not want that answer, and are positioning themselves to ignore it.  The BBC, of course, will be involved in a campaign to soften up public opinion.  


We have another fight on our hands…

IMPORTANT UPDATE: here