I had no idea...

Up until last night, I was proud to be an organ donor...

I was secure in my belief that it was the responsible thing to do if anyone meets an untimely death. Bill has never been an organ donor because something about it has never settled well with him, and I have explained to him on more than one occasion that it is morally acceptable because you are dead, and I compared it to cremation since the body and the soul are separated at death.

This is true of course, but there is more to the story...

Today organs are harvested in four different circumstances:

• From a living donor with informed consent from both parties. Ex: kidney transplant, part of a liver, etc.
• From a person who is declared dead by the old criteria of death, heart and lung function stop combined with rigor mortis. In this type only bone marrow, corneas, heart valves, and skin are able to be successfully retrieved.
• From a person who is declared "brain dead."
• From a person who is declared to have suffered "cardiac death."

Sounds simple, right? 

In 2000, Pope John Paul II said, "“Vital organs which occur singly in the body can be removed only after death; that is, from the body of someone who is certainly dead ... the death of a person is a single event consisting in the total disintegration of that unity and integrated whole that is the personal self ... The death of a person is an event which no scientific technique or empirical method can identify directly ... the ‘criteria’ for ascertaining death used by medicine today should not be understood as the technical scientific determination of that exact moment of a person’s death, but as a scientifically secure means of identifying the biological signs that a person has died.” He further stated that “the criterion adopted in more recent times for ascertaining the fact of death - namely the complete and irreversible cessation of all brain activity - if rigorously applied, does not seem to conflict with the essential elements of a sound anthropology.”

So basically, if we can determine that a person has absolutely no hope of recovering brain function beyond a shadow of a doubt, then harvesting organs from this person is morally licit. 

However, in 2005, just a few months before he died, Pope John Paul II reopened the debate because certain authorities were questioning whether or not cessation of brain activity was truly equivalent to death. He asked the Pontifical Academy of Sciences to reexamine the signs of death and get scientific confirmation they were still valid. 

In 2006, Bishop Sanchez, Chancellor of the Academy issued a statement saying that brain death is still the equivalent of the death of the person. However, Dr. Shewmon, vice chair of neurology at the University of California who participated in the 2006 Vatican study, disagreed with the consensus and stated that brain death alone "results in a terminally ill patient, deeply comatose, but not a dead person."

Okay, so the problem being raised is that the point when the soul actually leaves the body is never able to be proven much the same way as we have no way to know when the soul enters the human person so it is always best to err on the side of caution.

At this point, the Vatican's official position is that brain death is sufficient evidence of death.

The question is, what determines brain death? There is actually no medical consensus on the diagnostic criteria for brain death, and it is the subject of serious international discussion and debate. It is disturbing to think that by one doctor's standards a person is brain dead, but under another doctor's care, the same person is not. 

One thing that is standard is that to determine brain death, doctors universally conduct an apnea test. The doctor removes the ventilator in an attempt to determine if respiratory function is still intact. However, during the ten minutes that the test is conducted, carbon dioxide is building up in the body and blood pressure often drops indicating cardiac arrest. Naturally, this only worsens the person's condition, and it drastically lowers the chances of recovery. 

This is even more scary because this test is done without the family's consent more often than not...

Dr. Yoshio Watanabe, a cardiologist from Natoya Japan has stated that if patients are not subjected to the apnea test, they may have a 60 % higher chance of making a full recovery if treated correctly. 

However, if the apnea test determines lack of cardio respiratory function, and a person is declared brain dead, then doctors prepare to harvest the organs for transplant. They actually still use anesthesia to prevent the donor from moving during the removal process, and often there is even a drop in blood pressure which also occurs in regular surgeries if the level of anesthesia is too low....

There is concern that since the list of patients in need of a donor organ is far longer than the number of available organs, this leaves the doctors with a conflict of interest... 

It becomes a utilitarian rationale, and Dr. Robert Spaemann, a former philosopher at the University of Munich, told the Pontifical Academy of Sciences that the brain death approach to defining death reflects a new set of priorities. It was no longer the interest of the dying to avoid being declared “dead” prematurely, but the community’s interest in declaring a dying person dead as soon as possible. 

In an effort to increase the number of organ donors, assumed consent laws have already been passed in 40 states, and the only way to opt out is if there has been a written expression of decline from the person prior to circumstances. There has also been a massive movement to push the idea that organ donation is the socially responsible action. Just the other day, I heard a radio advertisement encouraging organ donation...

In 2003, Pope John Paul II said, “It is never licit to kill one human being in order to save another.” The Catechism of the Catholic Church also clearly states (paragraph 2296): “It is morally inadmissible directly to bring about the disabling mutilation or death of a human being, even in order to delay the death of other persons."

I am suddenly not so confident in my status as an organ donor, and I feel compelled to carry a card around signed by two witnesses saying that I decline organ donation. 

I trust the Vatican, but then I'm not sure what to do with all of this other information...

For more in depth details, check out this compelling article called, "Organ Donation: The Inconvenient Truth" by Dr. John B. Shea, MD, FRCP (C).   

Also, this article talks about a card being used to protect people from presumed consent laws: http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/oct/10102204.html

Soo...thoughts?