Doctors Push to Allow Death by Organ Donation
A recent study claims the majority of Americans would support ditching the ?dead-donor rule? for organ extraction.
by CELESTE MCGOVERN 12/08/2014
...
To avoid public confusion over complicated definitions like ?brain death,? some doctors and bioethicists are now saying it would be better ? and more ?honest? ? to simply allow the killing of patients by surgically removing their vital organs. The so-called ?dead-donor rule? ? the long-held ethic that says doctors must not end their patients? lives by extracting their organs ? is not followed in practice anyway, say the critics, so why have it?
...
?Gray Magic?
Robert Truog, professor of ethics, anesthesiology and pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, also favors doing away with the dead-donor rule to allow procurement of vital organs from living patients. ?Are we gerrymandering the lines between life and death solely to meet social goals, as important as they are?? he asked a convention of ethicists at the University of Chicago in 2012.
...
?What about procuring organs before death?? he asked. ?We?ll call it DPD ? donation prior to death.?
While medical ethics has traditionally drawn a firm line between physician as healer and physician as killer ? a ?line between white magic and black magic,? he said, ?sociologically, we have been shifting away from that, more towards, you might say, gray magic.?...
Read more:
http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/doctors-push-to-allow-death-by-organ-donation/#ixzz3LNZunZ00
