Department of Parts

Governments Deceptively Promote Euthanasia to Seize Your Organs

Although science fiction generally has a spotty record on predicting the future, there is one field of technology where its predictions have been regularly turning into real-world headlines—particularly at the horror end of the spectrum. That is the technology of organ transplantation.

Joseph Murray performed the first successful liver transplant in Boston in 1954, and Christiaan Barnard the first successful heart transplant in Cape Town in 1967. Science fiction writers quickly speculated on the next likely developments. Larry Niven suggested that this new medical capability, if expanded, would either create a tool for horrifying oppression by a ruling class (A Gift from Earth, 1968) or result in a booming underground market for organs obtained by murdering the "donors" (The Defenseless Dead, 1973).

This theme has also been explored in numerous films. Coma (1978), The Island (2005), Never Let Me Go (2010, based on Kazuo Ishiguro's 2005 novel), and other movies present a horrifying vision of the future, in which humans are harvested for their organs. Unfortunately, such stories are looking increasingly less like fiction and more like reality every day.

The Path to Horror

China provides the most extensive example. It is well-documented that the harvesting of organs from political prisoners, Falun Gong practitioners, Tibetans, Uyghurs, house-church Christians, and others has gone on in that country for years. The totalitarian rulers of the People's Republic continue to deny that fact, but the testimony of eyewitnesses and investigations by independent groups such as the International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China prove otherwise.

But Communist regimes aren't the only ones committing such atrocities. If current trends in the West continue, a disguised version of "harvesting" people for replacement parts will be tomorrow's reality.

We might wonder how that could happen in liberal democracies, but an honest look at the broadening practice and increasing acceptance of euthanasia might wake us up. There are now movements afoot in the medical world to tamper with euthanasia consent procedures and methods in order to accommodate the demand for organs. Wesley J. Smith explains how this is made palatable:

How do you convince society to embrace euthanasia as a means of attaining utilitarian benefit—while also convincing yourselves that your culture remains both moral and compassionate? Once you get past the squeamishness of allowing doctors to kill patients, it isn't that difficult: First, legalize euthanasia of the seriously ill and disabled. Once the community becomes comfortable with doctors committing homicide as a means of eliminating suffering, you next allow those who want to be killed to donate their organs. Next, ensure that the potential of euthanasia to add to the organ supply becomes well known, justifying it as you go along with soothing words of respecting autonomy and preventing suffering.¹

In other words, medical ethicists who are already comfortable with euthanasia and who subscribe to a utilitarian philosophy can tie euthanasia to organ donation and "sell" that idea to the public by making deceptively attractive appeals to compassion.

Smith's article was written in response to a chilling development in Canada. In June 2019, a "Guidance" issued by the Canadian Medical Association explicitly linked euthanasia and organ donation for the first time. As Smith reports:

The Guidance urges that the decision to be euthanized—called by the euphemistic acronym MAID (medical aid in dying) be made first—and apart—from the request to donate organs. The idea is to ensure that the ability to donate organs doesn't become the tipping point inducing the decision to die.²

Linking organ donation to euthanasia is meant to shift the perception of euthanasia in a positive direction, warns Alex Schadenberg, executive director of the Canada-based Euthanasia Prevention Coalition. Prospective euthanasia patients can be told that "people who are sick can get better because you had your life ended."³ Who could object to giving someone the opportunity to offer "the gift of life"?

That the "gift" might be obtained by euthanizing persons who were manipulated into giving consent, or who gave no consent at all, or whose natural deaths were not imminent must be left unmentioned. An ethical and legal regime is being created that, although cloaked in the language of compassion and human dignity, turns every medically helpless person into a potential victim of Coma-style clinical predation.

The Netherlands' Regime

Once established, this regime must be maintained. In 2019, the Dutch press gave significant coverage to two cases of potential violations of the Netherlands' 2002 law on euthanasia. The first was the case of a mentally ill man who had difficulty finding a hospital willing to combine euthanasia with organ donation. This case was investigated, not to establish whether an ethical breach had occurred by facilitating the killing and organ harvesting of a mentally ill person, but to determine whether or not those acts had been adequately facilitated by the hospital.

The second case concerned an elderly dementia patient who initially consented to euthanasia but later appeared to change her mind. The doctor euthanized her anyway. The words used by the Procurator General of the Supreme Court of the Netherlands to advise the judges in this case are revealing: "If a physician reaches the conclusion that this [prolonging life] is senseless and places an undue burden on the patient, this professional medical judgment must in principle be respected by judges."⁴ In other words, the court was not concerned about the rights of a patient who might have withdrawn consent, but about ensuring that consent to euthanasia, once given, not be revocable, once a doctor—and only a doctor—has deemed a patient's suffering a "hopeless and undue burden."

Euthanasia supporters in the Netherlands have been so successful in making the practice acceptable that they are now concerned that the waiting period is unacceptably long for those who have "come into consideration for euthanasia" for psychiatric reasons. Why? Because fewer and fewer psychiatrists are willing to recommend euthanasia for their patients.

If this didn't irritate euthanasia proponents enough, the Public Prosecutor is becoming increasingly involved in euthanasia cases, as mandated by the country's Prosecutor General since 2017. The goal of the mandate is to ensure that grey areas in the existing law do not lead to abuses. An editorial in the Dutch newspaper Het Reformatorisch Dagblad argued that the laws governing the practice of euthanasia in the Netherlands "provide insufficient safeguards" and that "the Netherlands' handling of the issue conflicts with the so-called BUPO-treaty, which obligates states to protect their citizens."⁵ Yet even this minor attempt to bring a greater degree of legal oversight to the practice has been enough to unsettle and even outrage some euthanasia supporters.

Linking euthanasia with organ donation is motivating medical professionals to ignore the requirement of a thorough review of patient consent before euthanasia is performed. Euthanasia proponents, even in the Netherlands, find themselves fighting to keep ethical objections from finding expression in law.

Germany's Escape

In Germany, the entire population recently escaped becoming involuntary organ donors by default. Under a proposed law, all the citizens of the country would automatically be considered organ donors upon death unless they specifically objected to the harvesting of their organs. The bill also stipulated that, in cases where doubt exists about the "putative will of the potential donor," family members or the spouse of the potential donor will be asked to consult with physicians about what should be done.

These provisions might sound reasonable and ethical, but they would motivate doctors, nurses, medical administrators, and perhaps even family members to rush to have a person in a long-term coma pronounced legally brain dead so his or her organs could be declared eligible for "harvesting." Should there be any profit in harvesting the patient's organs, there would be added motivation to declare him dead, especially since the action could easily be cloaked in the guise of beneficence: here is a way to provide organs to suffering, waiting patients. The continued, downward tendency to reassess the threshold criteria for certifying medical death would receive another push.

The most chilling aspect of the proposed German law was that even the representatives of the Christian Democratic Union, a generally conservative political party, favored it; they had no problem with the idea of turning their fellow citizens into property of the state if they became medically helpless. This attempt to permanently and deeply compromise individual human dignity and self-determination prompted the editors of the Süddeutsche Zeitung to publish a defense of human liberty, declaring, "Man belongs to himself, not the state." The editorial is worth quoting:

There are people who arrive at their "no" to organ donation with difficulty. . . . They doubt that they really will not feel anything once they have been declared brain dead. . . . It is an act of violence to subject people to pressure, to expose them to the mental pictures of the extractions and amputations that would be performed on their artificially respirated but dying bodies.⁶

Moreover, the bill's "opt-out solution" contradicts the principal clause of the German Constitution: that the dignity of man is inviolable. This principle applies to the dying as much as to the healthy. A person's dignity cannot be expunged by the state. Thankfully, the proposal was defeated, keeping Germany, at least for now, away from the horrifying state of embracing medical technology shorn of ethical constraints.

From Fiction to Non-Fiction?

Whether imposed by a totalitarian dictatorship or by a political and medical establishment cloaking a materialistic and utilitarian view of human worth in the guise of "compassion" and "mercy," linking organ donation to end-of-life procedures assails human dignity by denying the value of those who suffer from chronic illnesses or debilitating injuries.

At this time, the linkage of organ donation to euthanasia is facing legal challenges in the Netherlands and has suffered a major legislative blow in Germany. But the legal situation in Canada has raised a new threat to patients who are chronically ill or under palliative care in that country, and those states in the U.S. that have already legalized euthanasia in some form could well follow Canada's lead. Absent concerted political opposition, more and more places in the West almost certainly will, sooner or later, turn yesterday's horror fiction into today's gruesome reality.

Notes:
1. https://spectator.org/canada-conjoins-euthanasia-and-organ-harvesting.
2. Ibid.
3. LifeSite News (Jan. 9, 2020): lifesitenews.com/news/increased-harvesting-of-organs-from-euthanasia-signals-worse-horrors-to-come-experts.
4. Translated from Dutch by the author.
5. Translated from Dutch by the author.
6. Translated from German by the author.