Organ Harvesting Not “Body Mutilation”

Posted on May 16, 2012 by The CBC

By Wesley J. Smith, J.D., Special Consultant to the CBC

I have little sympathy for a lawsuit that has been filed against the California Transplant Donor Network. Apparently, it received consent from a family for limited organ retrieval, but may have gone further than the family wanted or agreed to. And now, in the unfortunate American tradition, they have sued. From the Courthouse News story:

A family says the California Transplant Donor Network pressured them into donating the organs of a recently deceased relative, then mutilated the body so badly they could not have a viewing at the funeral. After George Eisenbeis died on Apr. 30, 2011, the California Transplant Donor Network repeatedly contacted his family “for the purpose of inducing and/or coercing plaintiffs to donate all, or portions of, Mr. Eisenbeis’ remains,” according to the complaint in San Joaquin Superior Court. Though the family agreed to “a limited donation of portions of Mr. Eisenbeis’ remains,” they claim to have insisted that the company restore the remains “with dignity and respect so that the family could have a viewing at the funeral.”

It sounds like the corneas were taken, because evidence of the the taking of vital organs could be hidden by clothes.

And where did the Courthouse News come up with the term “organ mill,” which was not in quotes but seems to have been a characterization by the reporter:

They claim that the transplant mill’s actions violated California’s health and safety codes, resulting in the mutilation of Mr. Eisenbeis’ corpse. Though the family admits to giving their consent for “a limited recovery,” they says they never consented to any procedure that would conflict with their intent to have the body viewed at the funeral.

That was an unfair characterization without evidence to back it up in the story. And in this field, we shouldn’t be unnecessarily provocative because lives are at stake in the decisions made by families about whether to donate.

Obviously, what we had here was a failure to communicate. And that can happen. The organ professionals are certainly intent on obtaining organs. The health and lives of very sick patients hang in the balance. At the same time, these things often involve a sudden catastrophe, and the family is in a state of stun, shock, and grief. That can easily lead to miscommunication.

I once sat in on an organ consent conference with the permission of all parties. I was very impressed with the professionalism of the transplant professionals and the caring of the family, which in their grief, were thinking of other people and seeking to apply the values of their deceased loved one. It is an intense time, and the questions asked on the consent forms are very specific. But as I said . . .

Clearly, organ procurement networks should never go beyond the scope of the consent given. If the California Network did, I suppose there should be a cost to pay, although I can’t see the damages as being particularly high. The donor wasn’t actually hurt. And how much damages should be paid because the family had a closed instead of an open coffin funeral?

But that point aside, even if the procurement was wrongly conducted, it was not “mutilation” of the body. It was using proper surgical techniques to retrieve still viable tissues to help living patients.

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Final Exit Network Ghouls Indicted in MN

Posted on May 15, 2012 by The CBC

By Wesley J. Smith, J.D., Special Consultant to the CBC

The Final Exit Network “counsels” suicidal people on how to kill themselves with helium and a plastic bag. They also “attend” the suicides and apparently “clean up” afterwards so that investigators are unaware of the helium element in the deaths.

This has led to indictments for the suicide of a mentally ill woman in Phoenix, with two guilty felony pleas and an acquittal of one of FEN’s Big Heliums because he wasn’t there and because the judge did not let the jury learn the victim was mentally ill. Also, indictments in Georgia that were thrown out when the ridiculously worded law against assisted suicide was rightly declared unconstitutional, a problem since remedied.

Now, an indictment in Minnesota. From the Star Tribune story:

A national right-to-die group is headed for a court battle in Dakota County after investigators pieced together evidence linking it to an Apple Valley woman’s suicide nearly five years ago. Dakota County Attorney James Backstrom announced Monday that a local grand jury had indicted the Final Exit Network and four of its members on 17 counts of assisting a suicide and interfering with a death scene.

The network faces four counts, two of them felonies. Altogether, the grand jury returned indictments on nine felonies related to assisting in a suicide and eight gross misdemeanors for interference in a death scene. “If the people of our state wish to authorize assisted suicide, this should be done through clearly defined laws enacted by the Minnesota Legislature with proper restrictions and requirements to ensure the protection of a terminally ill patient and the direct involvement of the patient’s physician and immediate family,” Backstrom said during a news conference at the county law enforcement center in Hastings.

Please, Mr. Prosecutor, assisted suicide is not about terminal illness! This alleged victim wasn’t apparently terminally ill. Neither were the victims in the Georgia and Phoenix cases. And even if a law were passed allowing assisted suicide for the terminally ill, the FEN ghouls would still do that helium voodoo to those unqualified to be made dead by doctor-prescribed suicide. But he’s quite right about the necessity of following the rule of law — a societal problem on this issue since the Kevorkian days.

If FEN members were there and cleaned up the helium apparatus as charged, leading to a wrong coroner’s report, I don’t see how they get out of the conviction. Time will tell. But if they did the deed, I hope they serve time. Good for the prosecutors for bringing this case!

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Opportunities and Challenges

Posted on May 15, 2012 by The CBC

Friends,

The last six weeks have been packed with both new opportunities and challenges. You are helping to sustain me. Each team member of CBC sees that doors are opening in ways that were almost unthinkable even a year ago. Challenging cultural thought can be full of surprises. Be encouraged with us!

Here is a sampling of what has been going on:

Continue reading at CBC-Network.org

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The Trouble With Futile Care Theory

Posted on May 14, 2012 by The CBC

By Wesley J. Smith, J.D., Special Consultant to the CBC

I was pretty teed off about the Canadian doctors trying to force Hassan Rasouli off of wanted life-sustaining treatment. Then, when I found out that even though they were absolutely wrong in their “certainty” that he would never wake up, they still were considering trying to force him off of treatment, I took to the Daily Caller to describe the case, but more broadly, to warn a popular audience about the danger Futile Care Theory poses to the ethics of medicine and patient autonomy.

Here are some summarizing points. From, “‘Futile Care’ Duty to Die May Be Coming to a Hospital Near You:”

At this point, several important points need to be made about futile care:

1. Futility is not a medical determination; it is a value judgment. Treatment is refused based on “quality of life” judgmentalism and/or “cost-benefit” analysis.

2. Futility makes patient autonomy a one-way street. For years, we have been told that patients should state in writing what they want or don’t want in the event they become incapacitated. Futile Care Theory makes refusing treatment binding for patients who want to die, but allows doctors/bioethicists the final say over the care of patients who expressed a desire to live.

3. Futility strips from patients and families the power to make medicine’s most important health care decisions and give it to strangers: That’s precisely what is happening in the Rasouli case.

4. Futile Care Theory is only the first step toward a coming duty to die. Think of Futile Care Theory as ad hoc health care rationing. Once Obamacare is up and running, centralized boards will create cost-benefit bureaucratic boards that could systemize Futile Care Theory into mandatory refusals or outright health care rationing based on patients’ quality of life. Indeed, rationing has repeatedly been endorsed by notable publications such as The New England Journal of Medicine and The New York Times

Enough can’t be said or written about this topic. People need to be prepared.

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Bioethicists Fraternizing With the Enemy

Posted on May 14, 2012 by The CBC

By Wesley J. Smith, J.D., Special Consultant to the CBC

Oh dear. Carl Elliot, a bioethics professor, has written a blistering critique of his own field in the Chronicles of Higher Education. Elliot is angry because Pfizer has created a fellowship in bioethics and has takers, which he views as fraternizing with the enemy. From “Making a Name For Yourself in the Ethics Business:”

If there is anything surprising about the upsurge in pharma-funded bioethics, it is that it has been accompanied by a dramatic rise in criminal behavior by the pharmaceutical industry: fraud, illegal marketing, ghostwriting, tax evasion, kickbacks, and bribery. In fact, the pharmaceutical industry recently surpassed the defense industry as the leading defrauder of the federal government. According to a 2010 report by Public Citizen, the pharmaceutical industry had paid nearly $20-billion in settlements and penalties in the preceding two decades; 75 percent of the penalties had come in the preceding five years alone.

Apparently, many bioethicists see nothing unseemly about sharing in profits generated by criminal activity. In fact, the bioethicists working with industry are often among the most prominent in the field. If anything, an association with the pharmaceutical industry has become a mark of professional success. What does this say about the future of bioethics?

Hey, not everyone can become a tenured professor and argue from the safety of guaranteed lifetime employment, as some have, for infanticide, plant rights, and after-birth abortion. I mean, philosophy grads have to make a living.

Besides, why is being on Big Pharma’s payroll any worse than working for Big Government helping to justify and validate desired polices? After all, “bioethics” isn’t like law, or physics, or math. There are no “right” answers. It’s all subjective, the mainstream version generally consisting of liberal/utilitarian personal opinions dressed up in philosophical jargon.

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Doctors Ask Canadian Supreme Court to Impose Futile Care Theory

Posted on May 11, 2012 by The CBC

By Wesley J. Smith, J.D., Special Consultant to the CBC

The British Medical Journal reports that Canadian doctors are seeking Canadian Supreme Court authority to withdraw wanted life-extending treatment. From the May 10, 2012 story (abstract only):

Canada’s Supreme Court will next week consider an appeal from two Canadian doctors who seek, against a family’s objections, to withdraw life sustaining treatment from a patient they originally diagnosed as being in a persistent vegetative state, but whom they now describe as minimally conscious. Hassan Rasouli, 60, a retired Iranian born engineer, contracted bacterial meningitis in late 2010 after surgery to remove a brain tumour, and has since been on mechanical ventilation at Toronto’s Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. All parties agree, however, that he is no longer in a vegetative state and has repeatedly given the thumbs up at his wife’s request.

A year ago, Rasouli’s doctors concluded that life support was bringing no benefit. “It is as certain as anything ever is in medicine that he will never recover any degree of consciousness,” they wrote last year in a court affidavit.

Except he did! But their unequivocal prognostic error doesn’t cause them a moment’s pause.

Given the change in the patient’s diagnosis, the family has submitted a motion to dismiss the case as moot, to be heard on 17 May. But the doctors argue that the full case should still be heard in December, citing in court documents “a great need forguidance from this Court . . . when the law is unsettled.” “The Court of Appeal misapplied the law of informed consent in order to confer upon patients a right to insist upon the continuation of a particular treatment when the medical standard of care requires it to be withdrawn,” they argue.

So, it appears the doctors no longer want to impose death on their patient but want an order saying they should have been allowed to make sure he died by removing treatment even though they were wrong. You can’t make these things up.

These days, “standard of care” too often isn’t about the benefit of the “patient” but cost to society and imposing the values of strangers on patients and their families. That isn’t the doctor’s job.

Actually, I hope the Canadian Supreme Court takes the case because the facts mediate against a legal right to impose futile care theory in this case. They were wrong, and that happens a lot (as I reported in Culture of Death). What does that tell us about permitting bureaucratic “standards of care” guidelines to become mandatory rules of medical practice?

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No, Bioethicists Can’t Ride to the Rescue

Posted on May 10, 2012 by The CBC

By Wesley J. Smith, J.D., Special Consultant to the CBC

I warned in Culture of Death: The Assault on Medial Ethics in America that the bioethics movement had ambitions to influence life and public policy well beyond its sphere of influence in medicine and health-related laws and regulations. The title of an article published in Bioethics Today, kindly sent to me by its author, bioethicist David Lembeg, proves my point in spades. From, “Bioethics as a Force for Change — Health Care Policy, Financial Systems, and Environmental Conservation:”

But the need for bioethics and bioethicists is now more broad and more great than that required by the actions and policies of hospitals, medical device companies, and global pharmaceutical corporations. Society is at a crossroads and it’s time to call for all hands on deck. Bioethicists, trained in ethics and philosophy, are a precious resource. We possess and command a special skill set that is sorely needed in every area of public policy.

Every area of public policy? What to do about Iran? How to solve the national debt? Figuring out optimal tax rates that puts money in government coffers, but also isn’t too onerous to stifle job creation? Cutting waste in government? Deciding whether the 14th Amendment applies to same sex marriage? Figuring out the proper role of religion in a morally polyglot society? Judging proper parameters of the Patriot Act? Immigration: Border enforcement first, or reform? One could go on and on.

So, why do bioethicists offer the key to answering all of these non biomedical or biotech issues?

Our profession came to be partially in response to national outrage following the surfacing of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. The new field’s three cardinal principles were expounded in the Belmont Report:

  1. Respect for persons
  2. Beneficence
  3. Justice

Each principle can be unpacked almost without end to yield robust ethical and moral frameworks applicable to the majority of modern medical conundrums. Of course, bioethical frameworks are not procrustean devices and each set of circumstances is evaluated on its own terms and merits.

Which means they aren’t really “cardinal principles,” because in themselves, they do not constitute overarching goals or purposes. Rather, they are floaters — outcome justifiers, or hooks upon which to hang one’s hat (as we used to say in law) — since the same suggested policy may be seen as promoting social justice (say), while also violating individual autonomy — as in futile care theory. (Belmont was supplanted by “the Georgetown Mantra,” which added non maleficence to the list. You don’t hear much about these anymore.)

So, which of the non-cardinal principles prevails if one or more of the mantras conflict? The answer that the analyzer/advocate wanted all along! Indeed, the only way the Georgetown Mantra could work would be as tools to best accomplish a predetermined underlying truly cardinal principle — say human exceptionalism. But on their own, not so much.

On the other hand, “mainstream” bioethics is just another of the many liberal constituency groups that make up the political left. So, I guess one could use the Georgetown Mantra to argue on behalf of liberal political agendas: If autonomy means liberals win, we grasp autonomy. If social justice best promotes the liberal agenda, why then social justice should be the most important mantra. You get the idea.

But then, the rest of the country wouldn’t be any more likely to go along for the ride because it suited one or more of the mantras than it would for any other reason. Besides, bioethics has nothing to do with the proper level of banking regulations.

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Concerning Romney Fils’ “Commercialized Conception”

Posted on May 9, 2012 by The CBC

By Wesley J. Smith, J.D., Special Consultant to the CBC

This isn’t about the election, it is about our culture having developed such a strong sense of entitlement to what we want that norms and mores must fall to accommodate our desires. IVF often falls into that category.

I bring this up (again) because one of Mitt Romney’s sons Tweeted last weekend that he was so happy to have new twins and thanked his wife’s “gestational surrogate” (slightly less objectifying than “gestational carrier,” but not much) for her mothering (a word not used) services. I was appalled. IVF was supposed to be about the infertile who couldn’t otherwise have children, but the Romneys already had three children naturally and then had another by IVF — this as many already born children can’t get adopted.

I also think paid surrogacy is, by definition, exploitation. Think about what the surrogate mother (I refuse to use “gestational”) experiences; all of the emotions and hormonal bonding with the baby, the profound body changes, she experiences terrible pain and bleeds — and then has the baby taken away. And who knows whether taking a baby from the mother in which he or she formed has any impact on the child? We now know that babies born via IVF have potential health consequences. Plus, the pervasiveness of IVF has contributed to the objectification of embryos and the concept of reproduction as a consumer activity.

I was going to let it alone, but Jennifer Lahl, the head of the Center for Bioethics and Culture (for which I am a paid consultant) didn’t. Jennifer is one of the world’s foremost opponents of “commercialized conception.” She wrote a powerful piece on the Romney use of a surrogate that I recommend to all. She references the story from the Daily Mail also discussed here, about the baby manufacturing industry that mixes eugenics with the exploitation of destitute women from India. But Jennifer believes all paid surrogates are also wronged. From, “Money Changes Everything:”

The Romneys didn’t have to exploit a poor woman in India. They chose to exploit a woman, probably much less poor, right here in the U.S. And their surrogate might not have felt so exploited. She was just “helping a couple have a baby”—and being compensated for her help. Because of little regulation in the U.S., commercial surrogacy is legal and couples like the Romneys don’t have to outsource their pregnancies to India. Our Canadian neighbors got it right when the Supreme Court of Canada wrote, “allowing the purchase of human gametes and surrogacy services devalues human life and degrades those who choose to participate in such a commercial transaction” (emphasis mine).

Many of the news stories I’ve read over the weekend about Tagg and Jen Romney using a “gestational surrogate” state that this means the child is biologically theirs. I’m not sure how the press came to that conclusion because a gestational surrogate only provides the womb. Gestational surrogacy is just the derogatory term for the woman who carries and gives birth to the baby. They could have used an egg donor, which would mean the egg donor would be the genetic mother. They could have used a sperm donor too, meaning Tagg wouldn’t be the genetic father of the boys, if that was the case. And all this, apparently ignoring the Latter Day Saints’ position on surrogacy (the LDS church strongly discourages surrogate motherhood). Tagg and Jen have used this same surrogate in the past to give birth to their first son.

Outsourcing pregnancy. Wombs for rent. Commercialized Conception. Call me shocked and disgusted.

Just because something is legal doesn’t make it right.

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Money Changes Everything

Posted on May 8, 2012 by The CBC

By Jennifer Lahl, CBC President

When the news broke that Mitt and Ann Romney welcomed grandchildren numbers 17 and 18 this past Friday via “gestational surrogacy,” those of us here at CBC central—who oppose commercialized conception—wondered where the bottom is in these murky waters of assisted reproduction.

Tagg Romney posted this on his facebook page after the twins were born:

Jen and I are happy to announce the birth of twin boys, David Mitt and William Ryder. Everyone is healthy and happy. They weighed in at 5 lbs 13 oz and 19-3/4 inches and 6 lbs. 13 oz and 19 inches. A special thanks to our gestational surrogate who made this possible for us. Life truly is a miracle, and we feel so blessed to be able to celebrate the arrival of these precious boys into our family. For those keeping score at home, these are grandchildren numbers 17 and 18 for my parents.

Continue Reading at CBC-Network.org

Posted in Biological Colonialism, biotechnology, designer babies, donor, egg donation, Egg Donors, egg freezing, eggs, eggsploitation, enewsletter, exploitation, fertility tourism, human trafficking, in vitro technologies, infertility, IVF, IVY League Egg Donors, reproductive tech, Reproductive Tourism | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Doctor Shortage or Too Many Patients?

Posted on May 7, 2012 by The CBC

By Wesley J. Smith, J.D., Special Consultant to the CBC

Reader Don Nelson emails me a quote from the May 4 Kiplinger Newsletter. (No link):

A severe doctor shortage is looming: Over the next decade, a 45,000 deficit of primary care physicians and a similar lack of surgeons and specialists. Some specialties will decline, despite growing demand from an aging population. Other medical professionals will fill in . . . physician assistants, nurses, etc. Many will see their usual roles and responsibilities expanded to pick up the slack. With Congress unlikely to foot the bill for most residency slots, that’ll have to do.

The wrong answer from the Medical Intelligentsia and the technocratic class is coming: We don’t have too few doctors, but too many patients. Solution? Duty-to-die death panels, futile care, euthanasia/assisted suicide, eugenic abortion, perhaps even infanticide. Vermont leader/media has already pushed the rationing/assisted suicide meme to pay for single payer healthcare.

Posted in assisted suicide, end of life, euthanasia, futile treatment theory, physician assisted suicide, Suicide | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment