By Judie Brown
Dichotomy: "division into two mutually exclusive, opposed, or contradictory groups."
That is the most polite word I can thing of to describe the antics of the pro-death forces, which are moving ever so stealthily in their efforts to remove certain segments of the population from the land of the living. What you are about to read is not fiction; it is real, and it is happening right now in America.
William Saletan is a writer who has frequently been the object of negative comments from me, but in the case I am going to relate here, he is to be applauded. He, of all people, has seen through the veil and has found death where others would opine there is hope for healing. In his commentary "The retreating boundaries of organ harvesting," he discusses the ethical morass of the organ transplant business as it applies to infants who are near death. He talks about parents who can be cajoled into believing that if they but allow doctors to take organs that—while vital to their dying babies, will be more beneficial in the bodies of not-so-ill babies—they will be at peace about the impending death of their own child. I wrote about this case in early September and am encouraged that Saletan is now examining it himself. He writes,
Pick up the New England Journal of Medicine, and you'll see the far edge of this tortured world. In the journal, doctors at the Denver Children's Hospital describe how they removed hearts from infants 75 seconds after their hearts stopped. The infants were declared dead of heart failure even as their hearts, in new bodies, resume ticking. The federal government funded the procedure; other hospitals are looking to adopt it.
Is it wrong? If only the question were that simple. We like to think moral lines are fixed and clear: My heart is mine, not yours, and you can't have it till I'm dead. But in medicine, lines move. Dead means irreversibly stopped, and stoppages are increasingly reversible. Meanwhile, thanks to transplantation, entitlement to organs is becoming socialized. When life support ends, says one bioethicist, "not using viable organs wastes precious life-saving resources" and "costs the lives of other babies." Failure to take and reuse body parts looks like lethal negligence.
Of course, you and I know that it is wrong to take a single life for any reason, including the pretense that doing so may benefit someone else. It is always what it is: murder.
Further Saletan observes, "Actually, doctors don't wait for the donor's death. They arrange it. Not the illness or injury, of course, but the timing of demise."
And Saletan is not the only one grappling with what medicine obviously can do, but shouldn't do.
Touchstone has published an article by Anita Kuhn, who is equally concerned about a commentary in the New England Journal of Medicine. She begins by informing the reader,
In a remarkably candid article about organ donation in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), a doctor and a bioethicist make the unnerving observation that, in cases involving vital organs, many "donors" may not actually be dead at the time their organs are taken from them. While this statement corroborates the viewof many pro-life groups, scientists, and physicians, it is likely to be news to the general public.
Robert D.Truog, M.D. and bioethicist Franklin G. Miller, Ph.D. have exposed the sordid underbelly, not only of the Denver case involving the harvesting of organs from nearly dead babies, but the overall question of the ethics of removing a vital organ from a person who is not really dead. This is of particular interest, since neither is a dyed-in-the-wool pro-life thinker.
They appear to be growing uneasy with the "brain death" criteria, and it is clear they are ill at ease about efforts to move far beyond brain death to other more elastic criteria. As Kuhn writes, "The authors candidly admit that, with respect to both 'brain death' and 'cardiac death,' the justification for removing vital organs from patients 'cannot be that we are convinced they are really dead.' In these cases, the dead donor rule may be invoked, but it is not followed."
While we are at it, let us not forget that there are some medical professionals who "propose changing organ donation rules requiring patient or family consent for donation to 'presumed consent,' which legally assumes that everyone is automatically willing to be an organ donor unless they have documented an objection to it." What this means in the practice of transplant medicine is yet to be shown, but one can deduce from recent events that once again the argument that some good can come out of a loved one's demise will be used in ways that ordinary people like you and me cannot imagine.
You know, it's the lesser of two evils, or whatever!
Compounding this already difficult situation that probably confronts families far more frequently than I can guess, there is the ongoing dilemma of the patient who has no choice other than go to a hospital for care. Who can he trust? Surely the lovely nurse, whose friendship often provides psychological comfort, is the last bastion of confidence between a patient and his caregiver.
Well, if you live in California that may not be true at all. According to a report in the Los Angeles Times,
Dozens of registered nurses convicted of crimes, including sex offenses and attempted murder, have remained fully licensed to practice in California for years before the state nursing board acted against them.
And if you live in Oregon, there are people seeking an early, timed death, who may wind up becoming a statistic on an obituary page rather than someone who simply needs counseling. A recent study makes that very point.
You see, of those patients who chose physician assisted suicide, it now appears that at least some were clinically depressed at the time of the request, and probably would not have chosen early death if someone had taken the time to really pay attention to them. Published in the British Medical Journal, the study concluded that "the current practice of the Death with Dignity Act in Oregon may not adequately protect all mentally ill patients, and increased vigilance and systematic examination for depression among patients who may access legalized aid in dying are needed."
Sorry for all the bad news, but the situation is grave. No pun intended.
As a final example of the dichotomies in today's medical practice, I am compelled to call attention to one of the most devastating facts yet to come out regarding those who are alone and rely on competent healthcare professionals to help them at least be comfortable and as pain-free as possible. Joseph Sacco, M.D. has written an article about such patients, and it is interesting to note, for the record, that Sacco is not a pro-life enthusiast. In fact, by his own admission, he favors early death for some. He said, "Mention the idea of withholding or withdrawing medical care from patients who cannot express their wishes, and people get uncomfortable."
But his article, "Incapacitated, Alone and Treated to Death" reveals a shocking fact:
A 2007 study found that doctors in intensive-care units across the country commonly withheld or withdrew life support in critically or terminally ill patients who lacked surrogates, without knowledge of their wishes. Most such decisions were made by a single physician, without regard to hospital policy, professional society recommendations or state law. In other words, doctors are withholding treatment from this vulnerable population, a practice that is neither regulated nor publicly recognized.
If that isn't the height of devastating dichotomies, I do not know what is! Presuming to kill because nobody is around to hear about it is not medical practice—it is murder.
It is not health care; it is death dealing, and God help us because the future does not look any better. Disrespect for the human person's dignity appears to be getting much more agreeable to the very people who should be safeguarding it at all costs.
Judie Brown is president of American Life League and a member of the Pontifical Academy for Life.
Respond to Judie
http://www.all.org/newsroom_judieblog_response.php?id=2365
