THE UNETHICAL HARVEST AND INVOLUNTARY EUTHANASIA

"TRUST ME, I'M YOUR GOVERNMENT APPOINTED DOCTOR"

Just like pulling weeds from the garden??? 
  Certainly, we're at the threshold of a new and frightening lack of morality and it's lacking in Bio-Ethics.  After the things I've read, it appears to me that there are few ethics left in the study of bio-ethics.

  When one considers that the word "ethic" commonly has the definition "a principle of right or good conduct or a body of such principles."  I would have thought it safe to assume that the term "Bio-ethic" would be related to something good and moral, it appears my assumption was/is wrong.  The science of the study of Bio-ethics can be quite immoral, or void of morality all together.

  How many of us have ever heard of the "The Dead Donor Rule"?  Not many I assure you.  Allow me to back up a couple steps. 
  Two bioethicists, one from Duke University and another from the National Institute of Health have brought up the question "What makes killing wrong?"  Utilizing their definition of killing, these to men conclude if the person is "universally and irreversibly disabled" and has "no abilities to lose" then killing that person in order to harvest their organs to possibly save the lives of others, should not be considered morally wrong.  Walter Sinnot Miller, professor of ethics at (Duke) and Franklin Miller from the NIH Department of Bioethics have made this statement:  "What makes an act of killing morally wrong is not that the act causes loss of life or consciousness but rather that the act causes loss of all remaining abilities."  It is their argument that if no abilities remain then the "dead donor rule," which is the ethical practice that a person must be declared dead before removing vital organs, should apply to patients whose hearts have stopped and are being removed from a respirator.  Currently, under the "Dead Donor Rule" patients who are not brain-dead but who are undergoing and orchestrated withdrawal of life support are monitored for the onset of cardiac arrest.  In typical protocols, patients are pronounced dead 2-5 minutes after the onset of asystole (on the basic of cardiac criteria), and then their organs are removed as quickly as possible for transplantation.  One small problem, nearly everyone agrees that many patients could be resuscitated after an interval of 2 to 5 minutes, advocates of this approach to donation say that these patients can be regarded as dead because a decision has been made not to attempt resuscitation. 
  "The "Dead Donor Rule" is routinely violated in the contemporary practice of vital organ donation.  If traditional medical ethics were applied, this type of vital organ donation would have to cease immediately."  This outcome would, however, be extremely harmful and unreasonable from an ethical point of view [because patients who could be saved will die].  In other words there are two ethical points, if one is violated, the other suffers the consequences, and vice-versa.  That puts the medical community and the organ donation program in quite the pickle.  Curtailing the the vital organ donation harvesting practice would result in a severe reduction of vital organ transplants.  The bottom line question as I see it, is this question:  Is a person dead when his heart stops, or when his brain ceases to function?  Morally, in my opinion of course, a person should not be declared dead unless both heart and brain function have stopped.  However the absence of any brain function for a reasonably extended period of time might also be considered death, but that becomes a very serious ethical question.  That, being said is my opinion, these two bioethicists have a different idea, they wish to remove "pickle" by simply obviating what is now the norm against killing.  They put it this way:  "If killing were wrong just because it is causing death or the loss of life, then the same principle would apply with the same strength to pulling weeds out of a garden.  If it is not immoral to weed a garden, then life as such cannot really be sacred, and killing as such cannot be morally wrong." 
  In my opinion, both of these guys need to be straight-jacketed and put away for a long long time.  Killing is morally wrong, both from a religious stand point, and yes, from an ethical stand point.  Just because science is not happy with the stigma of being called killers for harvesting organs too soon, doesn't give them the right to basically change the definition of killing.  Killing is killing regardless of what you change it's definition to.  Once again I am taken back to a quote from C.S. Lewis.  "One can no more deny the existence of God, than a lunatic can put out the sun by scrawling the word darkness on the walls of his cell."  I hope I remembered that quote correctly, if not we'll call it paraphrase and I will assume that you understand the gist of what I am trying to convey.
   Due to the amount of legal scrutiny in the West, i.e., America, and Canada and other civilized countries like the UK.  The amount of organ donations have been quite limited, which of course explains why so many transplant patients die while still on the waiting list for a donor match, especially in the kidney category.  This of course results in the propagation of another very serious ethical matter.  This story goes even deeper and grows more disgusting.  It has been reported in the Daily Mail that women in the Ukraine are being paid to get pregnant and have abortions to create stem cells for use in "beauty treatments"; the BBC reported the practice might even include infanticide.  Poor women in India are renting their wombs to rich women for gestation, and some Westerners are buying Indian IVF embryos because it is cheaper than having them made at home.  (The above information was taken from an article written by Wesley J. Smith.  His article titled "TECHNOLOGICAL MORALITY was published in the National Review Online January 8, 2010)  (Other information can be attributed to "The Blaze" and written by Liz Kilmas on January 30, 2012)
  The world today is faced with many ethical questions, as science makes huge strides and medicine becomes more exact.  It is important to remember the moral aspect of ethics, which is sometimes abandoned in the name of expediency.  We have a moral obligation to question the ethics of science and medicine as well as a legal obligation, to try and stop things that well....just don't feel right.  God, is our refuge and our strength, He has also provided a guide for our moral direction.  That guide is the Holy Bible, and prayer for guidance from the Lord in all things will guide us, as well the scientists stay on the narrow path.  I urge everyone to seek the Lord's guidance in everything we do.  I urge prayer for Doctors and Scientists and Ethicists that they would also seek the Lord's guidance.  "Morality is the core of what keeps ethics, ethical."
  One more thing:  If you have a living will, you may want to stipulate that you'd like to be resuscitated at least once, prior to letting them you go.  Just a thought...
God Help Us
Sincerely,
The Watchman