Prolonging Life without Ethical Boundaries



Organ Transplant Surgery
Fifty years ago no one got organ transplants, because the medical procedure had not yet been invented.  No one woke up on the operating table just before vital organs were harvested to save someone else's life.  No one launched media campaigns and expensive court cases to thrust a terminally ill child to the top of an organ donor list, in order to buy a  bedridden year or two of life. No one fought with physicians at a comatose  son or daughter's bedside, over a decision to declare the patient  "brain dead" in order to harvest their living organs. And no one went to prison for organ trafficking, a burgeoning and highly profitable industry (and not just in poor countries).

Nevertheless, I'm all for prolonging life.  Like most folk, I'm almost greedily so if it is mine at stake or that of a loved one.  However I've now come to believe that our society is having the wrong conversation on the subject of organ transplants.    The problem of too few organs for those in need, has become a highly publicized issue.  A related question is what is the most equitable system for allocating these scarce organs. In fact, organ donation, often called "the gift of life"  has come to be seen in our society as a saintly act, carrying no downside. Conversely, the very notion that someone might squawk at becoming an organ donor is seen as cold-blooded and selfish.  But is it not possible that society itself pays a price when we lose the capacity to let go when the time comes, replaced by a grandiose sense of entitlement to life at any cost? I'm not trying to turn back the clock on medical progress.  I'm, instead, just thinking out loud. 

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