Broadening Death and Cheapening Life: The Organ “Shortage”

By John Stonestreet and Timothy D. Padgett - Posted at Breakpoint:

The Bible may not talk about organ donation, but it does have a lot to say about life.

In a recent guest essay in The New York Times, three medical doctors proposed a solution for the lack of suitable organs available for transplant in the United States. Because an estimated 15 people die every day waiting for a transplant, they said, “We need to broaden the definition of death.”

Their basic argument is that because the existing medical definition of death is too narrow, good organs are left on the table. Most organs donated for transplant can only be taken from someone who is clinically dead, meaning that the person’s heart has stopped or there is no brain activity even if the heart continues. The crisis, according to the authors, is because too many viable organs are damaged by a lack of blood flow or not enough people are dying with an active heart but a dead brain. Thus, they argue:

The solution, we believe, is to broaden the definition of brain death to include irreversibly comatose patients on life support. Using this definition, these patients would be legally dead regardless of whether a machine restored the beating of their heart.

In other words, people in “irreversible” comas should be considered dead, so that, as long as a person had consented to organ donation, “removal would proceed without delay.”

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For additional information, please see:

• What does the Bible say about organ donation? | GotQuestions.org
• The Unknown Harvest: Organ Donation and the Definition of Death | Answers in Genesis
• "Organ Donation: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly" - A Lecture for the AAPS