Life Guardian Foundation � To Protect and Preserve Life

"Brain Death" - The Simple Truth
"Brain Death" - It's NOT Death!
Beyond "BRAIN DEATH" (pdf)
Catholic World Report (pdf)
CWR Essay (pdf)
Life Support Directions (pdf)
The US UAGA 2006 (pdf)
Choose Life - Not Death (pdf)
Excision of Vital Organs (pdf)

MISSION STATEMENT:

Life Guardian Foundation is an organization founded and dedicated to educate the public that life of the human person is a gift. Respect is owed to every human person regardless of their state of health throughout their entire lifespan from conception until his or her natural end.
Read More....Click Here

CRITICAL INFORMATION CONCERNING "BRAIN DEATH" AND ORGAN TRANSPLANTATION

For over forty years there has been a deadly code of silence pertaining to "brain death." Behind closed doors a controversy raged. Many of those in the medical field opposed this reinvention of death. The controversy continues...

"Brain death" was invented for the sole purpose of organ transplantation, living human medical experimentation and a means in which measures to sustain life could be legally withdrawn. It was the first legal form of euthanasia in the US. This deadly code of silence has been broken.

It is time to inform the Public of the Truth.

CURRENT NEWS:

Bioethics experts challenge the 'Revised Uniform Anatomical Gift Act (2006)' - 4-14-09
By Paul A. Byrne, MD

Final Exit - Euthanasia in America - 3-29-09
Discussion on euthanasia in America hopefully with Dr. Paul Byrne and Ron Panzer of Hospice Patient's
Alliance.

Preserving and Protecting Life From Conception to Natural Death - Army of Apostles - 3-17-09
By Dr. Paul Bryne - Life Guardian Foundation
Click here to listen

Transplant Tragedy - Parents claim son was killed by the hospital for his organs - CBS News - 3-16-09
By Maggie Rodriguez
Click here to listen

Parents Accuse Hospital of Killing Son to Harvest Organs
By Kathleen Gilbert

PITTSBURGH, PA, March 5, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - An Ohio couple filed a lawsuit Wednesday accusing doctors of removing a breathing tube from their 18-year-old son, who had suffered a brain injury while skiing, in order to harvest his organs.

Michael and Teresa Jacobs of Bellevue, Ohio, parents of Gregory Jacobs, maintain that their son's death was caused, not by his injury, but by doctors removing his breathing tube and administering unspecified medication in preparation for organ removal.

The charges were filed against Pittsburgh's Hamot Medical Center doctors and a representative of the Center For Organ Recovery and Education (CORE).

The parents also say the CORE representative directed that Jacobs' organs be removed in the absence of a valid consent.

"But for the intentional trauma or asphyxiation of Gregory Jacobs, he would have lived, or, at the very least, his life would have been prolonged," says the lawsuit. "Gregory was alive before defendants started surgery and suffocated him in order to harvest his organs," which included his heart, liver and kidneys.

The suit maintains that Jacobs "experienced neither a cessation of cardiac activity nor a cessation of brain activities when surgeons began the procedures for removing his vital organs."

The parents filed the suit in the U. S. District Court in Pittsburgh seeking more than $5 million for their son's pain and suffering, medical bills, funeral expenses, and punitive damages.

The lawsuit comes only weeks after neurologist Dr. Cicero Coimbra told a Rome "brain death" conference that, "Diagnostic protocols for brain death actually induce death in patients who could recover to normal life by receiving timely and scientifically based therapies." (http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/feb/09022504.html)

Coimbra referred to the so-called "apnea test," whereby living patients who cannot breathe on their own have their ventilator removed, and are deemed "brain dead" if after ten minutes patients do not resume breathing. The problem with the test, said Coimbra, is that otherwise treatable patients sustain irreversible brain damage by oxygen deprivation during that ten minutes.

See related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:

"Brain Death" Test Causes Brain Necrosis and Kills Patients: Neurologist to Rome Conference
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/feb/09022504.html

"Brain Death" as Criteria for Organ Donation is a "Deception": Bereaved Mother
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/feb/09022306.html

"Brain Death" is Life, Not Death: Neurologists, Philosophers, Neonatologists, Jurists, and Bioethicists Unanimous at Conference
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/feb/09021608.html

Doctor to Tell Brain Death Conference Removing Organs from "Brain Dead" Patients Tantamount to Murder
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/feb/09021608.html

New England Journal of Medicine: 'Brain Death' is not Death - Organ Donors are Alive
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/aug/08081406.html

Pro-Life Conference on "Brain Death" Criteria Will Have Uphill Climb to Sway Entrenched Vatican Position
By Hilary White - Rome correspondent

ROME, February 26, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - If a patient is able to process oxygen from the lungs into the bloodstream, maintain a normal body temperature, digest food and expel waste, grow to normal adult size from the age of four to twenty, and even carry a child to term, can he or she be considered dead? Can a person who is "dead" wake up and go on later to finish a university degree? Can a corpse get out of bed, go home and go fishing? Can he get married and have children?

These are among the real-life stories of patients declared "brain dead" presented by medical experts at the "Signs of Life" conference on "brain death" criteria held near the Vatican in Rome last week. Ten speakers, who are among the world's most eminent in their fields, sounded a ringing rebuke to the continued support among medical professionals and ethicists for "brain death" as an accepted criterion for organ removal.

Dr. Paul Byrne, the conference organizer, told LifeSiteNews.com he was delighted with the success of the conference, that he hopes will bring the message that "brain death is not death" inside the walls of the Vatican where support for "brain death" criteria is still strong.

Dr. Byrne, a neonatologist and clinical professor of pediatrics at the University of Toledo, compared the struggle against "brain death" criteria with another battle: "I'm sure that slavery was at one time well-accepted in the United States, and that people saw big benefits to slavery. And yes, it was difficult to go away from that but it was absolutely essential."

"Slavery was doing evil things to persons. This issue of 'brain death' was invented to get beating hearts for transplantation. And there is no way that this can go on. It must get stopped."

Participants came from all over the world to attend the Signs of Life conference, with speakers from Quebec, Alberta, Ontario, Germany, Poland, the US, Brazil and Italy. The conference hall was packed to standing-room only with physicians, clergy, students, journalists, and academics. Clergy included two senior officials of the Vatican curia: Francis Cardinal Arinze, the head of the Congregation for Divine Worship and Sergio Cardinal Sebastiani, the President Emeritus of the Prefecture for the Economic Affairs of the Holy See. Two senior members of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith were also present. Conference organizers told LifeSiteNews.com that they had expected no more than a hundred to attend and were surprised but very pleased with the crowd of over 170 for the one-day event.

Conflicting voices on "brain death" criteria are still battling in the Church. In February 2005, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences (PAS) refused to publish the findings of its own conference after the speakers roundly denounced "brain death" as a cynical invention to further the monetary interests of organ transplanters. The speakers said that using "brain death" for the purpose of organ harvesting results in the death of helpless patients. The PAS convened a second conference in 2007 with different speakers who, with only two dissenting, supported "brain death" for organ transplants. Papers from the 2005 conference that opposed "brain death" were excluded without explanation to their authors.

During a Vatican-sponsored conference last November on organ transplantation, at which not a single speaker raised their voice against "brain death," Pope Benedict XVI warned in an address that "the removal of organs is allowed only in the presence of his actual death." But on the Monday following the Friday organ transplant conference, only the PAS conference report in favor of "brain death" was posted to the Vatican website and not the Pope's warning.

Dr. Byrne said that a major function of the Signs of Life conference was "to support Pope Benedict," whose address in November, he said, had started to turn the Church against "brain death."

"It's here to demonstrate clearly that 'brain death' never was true death. What we're trying to do is come back to the truth and protect and preserve the life that comes from God.

"When there are attacks on life, then we, as physicians, defend it and that is what this conference is for."

The Signs of Life conference, sponsored privately by various pro-life organizations, including Human Life International, the Northwest Ohio Guild of the Catholic Medical Association, American Life League and the Italian organization Associazione Famiglia Domani, stood in opposition to the second PAS conference, which was titled, "The Signs of Death."

Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:

Doctor to Tell Brain Death Conference Removing Organs from "Brain Dead" Patients Tantamount to Murder
Read Story (Click here)

Pro-Life Conference on "Brain Death" Criteria Will Have Uphill Climb to Sway Entrenched Vatican Position
Read Story (Click here)

Conference may Begin to Sway Vatican Opinion Against Brain Death: Eminent Philosopher
Read Story (Click Here)

Print this Story
Email to a Friend
View Story on LifeSiteNews.com

"Brain Death" is Life, Not Death: Neurologists, Philosophers, Neonatologists, Jurists, and Bioethicists Unanimous at Conference
By Hilary White - Rome correspondent

drbryne
Dr. Paul Byrne, the conference organizer, told LifeSiteNews.com he was delighted with the success of the conference, that he hopes will bring the message that "brain death is not death" inside the walls of the Vatican where support for "brain death" criteria is still strong.

"Slavery was doing evil things to persons. This issue of 'brain death' was invented to get beating hearts for transplantation. And there is no way that this can go on. It must get stopped."

cardinal
During a Vatican-sponsored conference last November on organ transplantation, at which not a single speaker raised their voice against "brain death," Pope Benedict XVI warned in an address that "the removal of organs is allowed only in the presence of his actual death." But on the Monday following the Friday organ transplant conference, only the PAS conference report in favor of "brain death" was posted to the Vatican website and not the Pope's warning.

Dr. Byrne said that a major function of the Signs of Life conference was "to support Pope Benedict," whose address in November, he said, had started to turn the Church against "brain death."

"It's here to demonstrate clearly that 'brain death' never was true death. What we're trying to do is come back to the truth and protect and preserve the life that comes from God.

"When there are attacks on life, then we, as physicians, defend it and that is what this conference is for."

Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:

Doctor to Tell Brain Death Conference Removing Organs from "Brain Dead" Patients Tantamount to Murder
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/feb/09021608.html

Pro-Life Conference on "Brain Death" Criteria Will Have Uphill Climb to Sway Entrenched Vatican Position
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/feb/09021607.html

Conference may Begin to Sway Vatican Opinion Against Brain Death: Eminent Philosopher
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/feb/09022404.html

Conference may Begin to Sway Vatican Opinion Against Brain Death: Eminent Philosopher
By Hilary White

ROME, February 24, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - While he said that he could not predict the future, Professor Josef Seifert told LifeSiteNews.com (LSN) on Friday that a conference on "brain death" criteria last week had possibly opened a door to moving opinion in the Vatican away from support for the use of the criteria for organ transplants.

In an interview with LifeSiteNews.com the day after the conference, Professor Seifert said, "I'm not a prophet. On the other hand, if one believes in the Catholic Church as I do, then one must assume that earlier or later the truth will triumph and that the Church will not teach something false on central issues of faith or morals. And if that is so, and if what we say is true, I trust that it will be formulated."

Professor Seifert is a philosopher and the rector of the International Academy for Philosophy of Liechtenstein and a member of the Pontifical Academy of Life and was a speaker at the 'Signs of Life' conference held last week near the Vatican.

The conference was organized by Human Life International (HLI) and the American Life League (ALL), as well as the Italian organization Associazione Famiglia Domani and other groups, to address the growing opinion in academia, medicine and even within the Church that "brain death" is a legitimate diagnosis. The conference speakers, including eminent neurologists, jurors, philosophers and bioethicists, were united in their denunciation of the "brain death" criteria as a tool in the determination of death.

Speaking at the conference on the original formulation of the so-called 1968 Harvard Criteria that created "brain death," Professor Seifert told participants, "We look in vain for any argument for this unheard of change of determining death ... except for two pragmatic reasons for introducing it, which have nothing to do at all with the question of whether a patient is dead but only deal with why it is practically useful to consider or define him to be dead."

The two "pragmatic reasons" cited by the Harvard Report, he said, were "the wish to obtain organs for implantation and to have a criterion for switching off ventilators in ICUs." He said these must be rejected because they "possess absolutely no theoretical or scientific value to determine death." This conclusion was amply supported by clinical neurologists, and neurocardiologists, who told participants that a patient who is declared "brain dead" by the standard criteria, is, quite simply, still alive.

To LSN Professor Seifert responded to comments made in September 2008 by Francesco D'Agostino, professor of the philosophy of law and president emeritus of the Italian bioethics committee, that opposition to the "brain death" criteria in the Church is "strictly in the minority." A 2006 document, entitled "Why the Concept of Brain Death Is Valid as a Definition of Death," was signed by Cardinal Georges Cottier, then theologian to the papal household; Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, at the time president of the Pontifical Council for the Family; Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, the former Archbishop of Milan; and Bishop Elio Sgreccia, the then president of the Pontifical Academy for Life.

Professor Seifert, however, said that he did not agree with the assertion that there is a universal consensus in the Church supporting brain death. He pointed to the act in 2005 by Pope John Paul II in convening a conference to discuss "brain death" as evidence that the subject is far from closed at the Vatican. Indeed, continued interest was signaled last week by the presence at the Signs of Life conference of Cardinals Arinze and Sebastiani and two representatives of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

"There's no official church teaching at all against the conclusion that all the speakers reached yesterday that the brain death definition is not correct," he said.

He also said, however, that the matter of whether there is a universal consensus among medical professionals on "brain death" is not a central concern for the Church. "For the Magisterium of the Church it's a question of whether it's a fact or not."

Professor Seifert also noted the address by Pope Benedict XVI in November to the participants at a Vatican sponsored conference on organ transplants in which he did not use the term "brain death" but pointedly referred only to "actual death."

The Pope said that "the main criterion" must be "respect for the life of the donor so that the removal of organs is allowed only in the presence of his actual death," a strong indicator that he does not accept the concept of "brain death" as indicating actual death, according to Seifert.

Professor Seifert said, "One could hope that this speech prepares the way for formulating this even more clearly with reference to brain death. Many people like the organizer, Dr. [Paul] Byrne, who organized the conference, interprets this statement in this way. Now it may be wishful thinking, but it may also be correct."

The idea that there is a majority opinion among theological and ethics experts, including the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, in the Church in favor of "brain death" is irrelevant, he said, in the search for the truth.

"The same happened in the case of Humanae Vitae. There was a minority and a majority and the majority report said you should admit the Pill and contraception. But the Pope followed the minority report. A majority opinion is never what dominates and what should determine Church teaching is rather the truth. In the light of reason and also of Revelation, and not simply the opinion of a majority of people."

"Particularly not the majority of scientists," he added, "who are very fallible individuals."

"Normally there is much more common sense in simple people than in academicians and professors who all have their theories. It's very rare, I think, to have academicians to have the same simple pursuit of truth than among non-academicians."

He warned that the "brain death" theory has the characteristics of an ideology.

"It's clear that [transplantation] is a million or billion dollar business and it is clear that also it is useful for many patients." He said that motives such as fame for transplant doctors and researchers and money are among the "vested interests that could obscure the truth."

"For that reason, I think, if there's a majority in favor, it doesn't say much."

Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
Pope Warns Organ Transplant Conference of Abuses of Death Criteria
Click Here to Read

"Brain Death" as Criteria for Organ Donation is a "Deception": Bereaved Mother
By Hilary White, Rome correspondent

ROME, February 23, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Bernice Jones came to Rome last week to tell the world that doctors killed her son by removing his organs. "Brain death is not death" and "organ donation is very deceptive," the bereaved mother told LifeSiteNews.com in an interview on Thursday.

Mrs. Jones was attending an international conference on the dangers of so-called "brain death" criteria and related her experience of losing her son, Brandon, who was declared "brain dead" and used as an organ donor.

"Families are led to believe that their loved ones are dead," Jones told LSN, "but in fact they are alive. You must be alive to be a vital organ donor." Families, she said, are being deceived by doctors and hospital administrators, "by everyone who is involved in organ transplantation." The declaration of brain death "is a deception, a violent deception, that your loved one is dead."

Jones described what she characterized as a betrayal of principle by medical professionals at a hospital in their home state of Washington, whose priority she argued is no longer the care of the patient at hand but the procurement of organs for transplants. Although she declined to name the hospital, she said, "It happens at all hospitals."

Nine years ago, Mrs. Jones's son suffered an accidental gunshot wound to the head and was declared "brain dead" upon arrival at the hospital. He was immediately prepared for the removal of his organs.

Mrs. Jones said, "While my family and I thought that our son was being treated for his well-being, to preserve and protect his life, he was not, he was being treated to be an organ donor."

"His vital organs were being procured not for his benefit but to benefit someone else."

24 hours after the family was told Brandon was dead, Mrs. Jones had an intuition that her son was still alive. Later investigation revealed that the hospital had told the family her son was "brain dead" but, without the family's knowledge, had kept him alive on a respirator for 20 hours while flooding his body with fluids and drugs in preparation for what his mother described as a live "dissection" that brought about his death.

Legal consent, she said, was obtained while the family was in deep shock over the accident. Jones's husband signed the consent forms over her objections and the family, still in shock, was told to go home. During their time at the hospital, the family was introduced to a woman whom doctors referred to as an "organ procurement agent." This woman used what Mrs. Jones described as a standard "script," speaking soothingly to the family about Brandon's altruism and desire to help others, to induce them to sign the consent forms, copies of which were not given to the family.

Mrs. Jones was later to learn that these procedures are standard for organ retrieval. "All of the organ donor families I have spoken to received the same script," she said. Organ procurement officials approach the family when they are at their most vulnerable, she said. "It's always when you're not mentally, emotionally capable" of making an informed decision.

Prior to obtaining his organs, Brandon was given paralysing drugs to keep him from moving. He was anesthetised during the removal process. Mrs. Jones said that the diagnosis of brain death is a sham. "If he is supposed to be dead, why does he need paralysing drugs to keep him from moving? Why does he need anesthesia?"

Brandon Jones was given, without his family's consent, what is called an "apnea test" by doctors, to determine brain death. Doctors remove the ventilator for two minutes from a patient who requires assistance breathing. The heart rate decreases and after two minutes without oxygen, "brain death" is declared.

The apnea test as a diagnostic tool was specifically denounced at the conference as unethical by Dr. Cicero Coimbra, a neurologist from Sao Paolo, Brazil. The test, he said, which cuts off oxygen to the brain, will bring about severe, irreversible brain damage in patients who, with proper care, would otherwise have had a good chance of survival.

Mrs. Jones believes doctors who are motivated by the desire to obtain organs use the apnea test knowing that it will induce severe brain damage while the body is prepared for organ removal.

Despite the harm it does, the apnea test, she said, is administered without the family's consent. "We were in with our son, and they told us to leave the room, that they had to perform a test. They did not ask permission to do this."

"If a family was made aware of what an apnea test consists of, no family member would ever consent to this."

She described what happened to her son: "For two minutes they took the ventilator away from him. They wait for the pulse to go down but the heart continues to beat. Then they put the ventilator back on. Now, in this two-minute timeframe, they pronounce the patient dead.

"Before they put them back on the ventilator they pronounce the patient dead. It's a prerequisite to being able to declare a legal but fictional death." This "death" is what she has described as a "convenience death, invented to schedule and regulate the actual time of real death."

Brandon died, she claimed, while his organs, including his still-beating heart, were removed in surgery. "Our son had been dissected alive and in doing so, killed."

Mrs. Jones is the founder of an organization of parents and families who have undergone this experience and which is dedicated to bringing to the public eye the danger of the "brain death" criteria. The Life Guardian Foundation is dedicated to educating the public that "life of the human person is a gift."

The group calls it "irreverent" to use terms such as "brain dead," "vegetative state," "terminal condition," and "imminent danger of death." "Such designations have been proposed and are actively used for the sole purpose of demeaning and shortening life, as well as to hasten the death of a human person."

Mrs. Jones said that in her research after her son's death that "there is no scientific validation for 'brain death'. Absolutely none, whatsoever."

Vatican in �Firestorm� over Brain Death Criteria for Organ Transplants
By Hilary White

ROME, November 24, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com ) � Dispute within the Vatican on the approval of so-called �brain death� criteria for organ transplants remains sharp, according to a senior Vatican correspondent. Sandro Magister, a leading Italian journalist and expert on the Vatican, wrote this week of the internal dispute over support and opposition to �brain death� criteria, the definition of death that allows vital organs to be removed from patients while their hearts are still beating.

Magister points out that in September this year, L�Osservatore Romano, the official newspaper of the Vatican, published on its front page a long article by the philosopher Lucetta Scaraffia. Scaraffia, who is the vice-president of the Italian Association for Science and Life and a member of the Italian National Committee on Bio-Ethics, called into question the Vatican�s approval of �brain death� criteria for organ transplants.

That article, said Magister, �raised a firestorm� of debate within the Vatican, coming as it did in the immediate lead-up to a generously financed international conference on organ transplants, sponsored in part by the Pontifical Academy for Life (PAV). That sponsorship had outraged pro-life advocates around the world who said that, given the problems surrounding organ transplantation, the PAV had no business promoting it. Judie Brown, a member of the PAV and the head of American Life League, had written to Academy head Archbishop Fisichella asking that the conference be postponed or cancelled altogether.

Nevertheless, Magister said, the �predominant approach� towards organ transplantation by the Vatican has been �agreement with the practice of transplanting organs after the confirmation of brain death.� It was perhaps with this �agreement� in mind that Scaraffia wrote in L�Osservatore Romano that a declaration of �brain death: cannot be considered the end of life in light of new scientific research."

The unease of the pro-life movement with �brain death� was sustained by Pope Benedict XVI�s address to the transplant conference, in which he pointedly insisted that organ donation must remain �a gift� of the donor and that organs cannot be taken from vulnerable persons without their consent.

�The main criterion,� the Pope said, must be �respect for the life of the donor so that the removal of organs is allowed only in the presence of his actual death.�

The Pope is likely to have been referring to the L�Osservatore Romano article when he told the Transplant Conference, �Science, in recent years has made further progress in the determination of the death of a patient.� In the question of determination of death, the Pope cautioned, �there must not be the slightest suspicion of arbitrariness. Where certainty cannot be achieved, the principle of precaution must prevail.�

At the same time, however, Magister says that �pressure was applied� to Pope Benedict to attempt to force him to confirm �brain death� as a valid criterion. Magister pointed out, as evidence of the dispute within the Vatican, that Bishop Marc�lo S�nchez Sorondo, chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences (PAS), immediately following the Pope�s address hastened to post to the Vatican website the findings of a group of scholars at a 2006 conference of the PAS who supported �brain death� criteria.

Bishop Sorando did not also post the suppressed findings of the 2005 conference on the same topic where a majority of participants opposed 'brain death' as a true definition of death. There was a more selective invitation to pro-organ transplant scholars for the 2006 conference.

Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:

The Demise of "Brain Death": Commentary by Dr. Paul A. Byrne, M.D.
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/sep/08091803.html
Print this Story
Email to a Friend
View Story on LifeSiteNews.com

Pro-Life Conference on "Brain Death" Criteria Will Have Uphill Climb to Sway Entrenched Vatican Position
By Hilary White

ROME, February 16, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - An conference set to take place in Rome this week on "brain death" seeks to clarify the position of the Catholic Church on the removal of vital organs from patients.

In November 2008, a high-profile conference on organ transplants, held in one of Rome's most prominent conference halls, steps away from St. Peter's Basilica, and sponsored by the Vatican's Pontifical Academy for Life, caused an uproar when it declined to address the ethical problems of "brain death" criteria.

Hundreds of letters and appeals to the Pontifical Academy for Life from pro-life advocates around the world went un-answered and the conference went ahead with no mention of any of the controversy surrounding the use of these and other criteria that allow the removal of organs from living patients.

Pope Benedict XVI, however, in his address to the conference, warned that organ transplantation can be a source of abuses of "human dignity."

"The main criterion," the Pope said, must be "respect for the life of the donor so that the removal of organs is allowed only in the presence of his actual death."

Immediately following publication of the Pope's address, however, the Vatican website posted articles defending the use of brain death criteria in determining death for purposes of organ transplants.

In early September, as news of the organ donor conference was starting to make the rounds of the pro-life community, L'Osservatore Romano broke ranks and published an article by Lucetta Scaraffia, a professor of contemporary history at the Rome university La Sapienza, outlining the dangers of the brain death criteria.

In response, the director of the Holy See Press Office, Fr. Federico Lombardi, backpedalled away from the position taken in the article, saying it is "not an act of the Church's magisterium, nor a document of a pontifical organism," and that the reflections expressed in it "are to be attributed to the author of the text, and are not binding for the Holy See."

This week's conference has a large task ahead in convincing the Vatican to shift direction in its support of brain death criteria. In 1985, a statement from the Pontifical Academy of Sciences upheld the use of "irreversible coma" as a legitimate criterion for a definition of death for organ removal. This was reiterated in 1989 with another statement from the same academy, reinforced with a speech by John Paul II. John Paul II reinforced this position in an address to a world congress of the Transplantation Society, on August 29, 2000.

Sandro Magister, a reporter on Vatican affairs wrote in September, "In this way, the Catholic Church in fact legitimated the removal of organs as universally practiced today on people at the end of life because of illness or injury: with the donor defined as dead after an 'irreversible coma"' has been verified, even if he is still breathing and his heart is beating."

Magister quoted Francesco D'Agostino, a professor of the philosophy of law and president emeritus of the Italian bioethics committee, and a member of the "ecclesial camp," saying, "Lucetta Scaraffia's thesis is present in the scientific realm, but it is distinctly in the minority."

Dr. Paul Byrne is one of the organisers of this week's conference, provided LifeSiteNews.com with an advance copy of his presentation. He intends to argue the case that the use of "brain death" criteria results in the removal of organs from living patients, and is tantamount to murder. (To find out more about his presentation see: http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/feb/09021608.html)

Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:

Pope Warns Organ Transplant Conference of Abuses of Death Criteria
Print this Story
Email to a Friend
View Story on LifeSiteNews.com

Exclusive: Sources Reveal Internal Uproar over Vatican Conference Promoting Organ Donation
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/sep/08090513.html

Vatican Newspaper: Brain Death and thus Organ Donation Must be Reconsidered
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/sep/08090310.html

Pope Warns Organ Transplant Conference of Abuses of Death Criteria
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/nov/08110706.html

Should the "dead donor" rule be rescinded? -
At Children�s Hospital in Denver, three babies recently had successful heart transplants from neurologically damaged donors who were not brain dead. The donors were removed from the ventilator in the operating suite, and their hearts were harvested within minutes after asystole. Click Here to read more...

A Must See:
Interview with Dr. Paul Byrne on Brain Death and Organ Transplantation

The Face of Pro-Life: Dr. Paul Byrne on Brain Death and Organ Transplants

Blog - "New"
Click Here to post your comments