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France Begins Opt-Out Organ Donation (theoutline.com)
Laura June, reporting for The Outline: France began to use a new opt-out system of organ donation on Jan. 1, making it one of a large number of European nations that now use a "presumed consent" system. This means that any adult who dies will now donate their organs by default, regardless of their survivors' wishes, unless they have signed a refusal registry in advance. The new law gets around what has historically been a stumbling block for organ donation: the surviving families of the deceased. A survey in France previously showed that while up to 80 percent of the population was in favor of donating their own organs, about 40 percent of families refuse when pressed to make the choice.
I'd rather them not turn me off prematurely just so they can steal my organs, thanks.
Cases in point: http://legalpublication.blogsp...
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/or...
And here's the icing on the cake: http://www.melissacaulk.com/th...
I'll just leave this here form the article:
"In a shocking statement, Dr. Neil Lazar, Director of the Medical-Surgical Intensive Care unit at Toronto General Hospital, says the focus should be on the well-being of donors rather than whether they are legally dead. That could mean giving anesthetics during organ harvesting.
He and his co-authors, Dr. Maxwell J. Smith of the University of Toronto, and David Rodriguez-Arias of Universidad del Pais Vasco in Spain, advocate replacing the current “dead-donor rule” with a policy that educates the public about the true nature of patients used in transplants, obtain informed consent from everyone — and ensure the donor does not suffer during the organ harvesting. The study was published in the American Journal of Bioethics.
The authors state frankly that under current practices donors may be technically still alive when organs are harvested – a necessary condition to produce healthy, living organs. Because of this, they say that protocol requiring a donor’s death is “dangerously misleading,” and could overlook the well-being of the donor who may still be able to suffer during the harvesting procedure.
All I know is that if I need anesthetics while they are ripping me apart, I might have a few concerns about whether I am dead or not.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
The rules for Dead are pretty solid.
When there's reports of people waking up in the morgue or, even worse, having the medical examiner realizing they're not quite dead yet when starting the autopsy, I think it's safe to say we're not terribly good at telling if somebody's dead even off the old rules--and the organs are mostly useless for donation once the person's reached the no-heartbeat flavor of dead. (I think there's a few things you can still use, and in fact harvest for a bit after that, but...)
The problem is that we've got unfortunately good evidence that we are not as good as we need to be about telling if somebody's brain dead--which is what you want for organ donation--and there's been questions raised, including simply on the ethics side, of if a doctor who knows the patient is a donor will be as careful about making sure the person is brain dead as we need them to be. I know that in the US, currently the doctor is supposed to have no clue--until brain death is declared, nobody's supposed to even check--but how true that is...
It doesn't help that, to put it bluntly, the hospital gets money even if you(r estate) doesn't.
Anyway. Basically, the problem is that the ethics involved look pretty good, right up until you actually start looking, and people freak out about what may actually be the most ethical possible situation of having somebody asking for their ventilator to be switched off before they hit shut-in syndrome, and for it to be done at a hospital so their organs can be donate. Yes, you're turning off somebody's life support so you can harvest their organs--but you're not ever going to get any better consent, and as long as they've the right to ask for their life support to be turned off the choice ought to be theirs.
People that work in ERs, or once worked there, are the most likely to ask for "Do Not Resuscitate" or DNR orders when they are hospitalized.
When my wife Sue was diagnosed with fatal brain tumor the day before Thanksgiving 2005, she completed a health-care proxy (living will) stating that no extraordinary measures should be used and a DNR. When her brain stem was damaged six weeks later, she fell into a coma and I had the fun task of re-asserting her DNR. She died a week later on Jan 13, 2006. Sue was a teacher so, instead of donating her organs, she donated her body to science. She was only 61 (I was then 42) and in excellent health (other than the brain tumor) and most donors are much older and in poorer health, so the Virginia Anatomical Program was very happy to have her (so to speak).
I have also completed a living will and healthcare proxy form and registered them with the U.S. Living Will Registry specifying no extraordinary measures and registered with the Virginia State Anatomical Program to have my body donated to science.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Do you have a link to that data? A quick Google turned up nothing.
Personally I'm more concerned with being kept alive too long. The last thing I want is to live in pain or unable to move.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I couldn't find the original journal article, but this WSJ article lays it out pretty clearly. The tests they use are from the 1960s and among other things, not checking for higher brain function with an EEG is a real problem for me.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB...
An excerpt: " In a 1999 article in the peer-reviewed journal Anesthesiology, Gail A. Van Norman, a professor of anesthesiology at the University of Washington, reported a case in which a 30-year-old patient with severe head trauma began breathing spontaneously after being declared brain dead. The physicians said that, because there was no chance of recovery, he could still be considered dead. The harvest proceeded over the objections of the anesthesiologist, who saw the donor move, and then react to the scalpel with hypertension."
Those of you looking to avoid pain may not like it if you can feel yourself being slowly dissected...
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like