News Archives
Organ "Harvesting" Policy in Canada to Allow Terminal Patients to be Killed for Parts?
ORONTO, September 16, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Before the practice of organ donation and transplants began, the definition of death was not very difficult. If a person had no signs of life, if his brain, heart and other organs had ceased to show any activity, he was dead. But in the age of transplants and "miraculous" resuscitation, what constitutes death has become a controversial issue. Increasingly, the need to wait until the patient is no longer using his organs, is being overlooked in the rush to get fresh organs to transplant patients. The longer a donor has been dead, the less likely a donated organ will be to "take" in a recipient's body.
Coupled with the erosion of the value of life from abortion and the rise of euthanasia, assisted suicide and related "end of life" issues, medical ethics is moving more and more into a dangerous grey area. From less-developed countries, it is becoming more common to hear news reports, horror stories, of patients having their organs "harvested" without permission and of poor and marginalized persons being killed for their organs.