Humanize From Discovery Institute's Center on Human Exceptionalism
Topic

organ donation

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Surgeon performs operation in hospital with precision
Image Credit: Jessica - Adobe Stock

Human Kidney Suppliers Should Be Donors, Not Vendors

There are some 91,000 people with severe kidney disease waiting for transplants. Alas, cadaver and living donors are insufficient to fill the need. That has some well-meaning activists pushing to increase the number of available kidneys by legalizing organ-selling. The psychiatrist and American Enterprise Institute senior fellow Sally Satel is probably the premier proponent of this approach. She has skin in the game, having received two living-donor organs. Writing in the Free Press, Satel promotes a bill that would allow kidney suppliers to become vendors and receive a tax credit. From, “I Had Two Kidney Transplants: I Want Donors to Get Paid.” But now, legislation is on the table that would save these patients’ lives while eliminating those concerns. On Read More ›

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Cute piglet portrait in veterinarian hands, Close up eyes of swine in the farm. Hugging a pig.
Image Credit: krumanop - Adobe Stock

Pig-to-Human Kidney Transplant Offers Hope — and an Ethical Solution

With so many people on the organ transplant waiting list, the ethics of organ donation have begun to buckle. These proposals are not only unethical, in my opinion; in some cases they also treat donors as objects rather than subjects. Each and any of them could undermine the public’s already thin trust in the organ transplant system, which would be a catastrophe. But an ethical way forward has also been researched assiduously, and it is beginning to bear fruit: xenotransplantation, that is, the use of pigs’ organs, genetically altered to be more compatible with humans. Early experiments offer cause for optimism. Recently, a woman who was dying of kidney failure received a pig kidney, and she seems to be doing well. Read More ›

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Team of surgeon doctors are performing heart surgery operation for patient from organ donor to save more life in emergency surgical room
Image Credit: Akarawut - Adobe Stock

Euthanasia Turning Suicidal People into “Kill and Harvest” Natural Resource

In the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, and Canada, people who want euthanasia can become organ donors. (A recent report in Spain showed that 13 percent of those euthanized donated organs.) Let’s call it “kill and harvest,” a policy heartily approved by our ever more crassly utilitarian medical establishment. Indeed, a recent study in JAMA Surgery applauds procuring the kidneys of the euthanized because, after five years, the organs of those killed by doctors and then transplanted have worked well — even better than kidneys donated by people after brain death. From the conclusion of the study, which discusses donation after circulatory death from euthanasia (DCD-V): This study found that DCD-V kidney transplantation yielded a lower incidence of DGF [delayed graft function] compared with DCD-III kidney transplantation Read More ›

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Organ transplantation medical professional in a rush
Image Credit: Microgen - Adobe Stock

A Market in Human Kidneys Is a Bad Idea

It is sometimes said that desperate circumstances require desperate measures. But desperation can also lead to the exploitation of the vulnerable. Such would be the case if we created a market in live-donation human kidneys. Read More ›
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An empty hospital bed with dying flowers.
Image Credit: Elle Arden - Adobe Stock

Euthanasia Poisons People and Societies

Most of the media report on euthanasia in the glowing, uncritical language of empowered patients "dying peacefully on their own terms." In contrast, euthanasia abuses and horror stories—an ever-growing list—generally receive little focused media attention and remain outside the notice of people not engaged with the issue. Read More ›
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Busy surgeons over the operating table
Image Credit: gpointstudio - Adobe Stock

Don’t Let Doctors Kill Sick Patients for Their Organs

Some lines should never be crossed. Allowing doctors to kill patients during organ harvesting wouldn’t only be an acute threat to the sanctity of life, but I can think of no better way to sow mistrust in our health care system generally—and the lifesaving field of organ transplant medicine specifically. Read More ›
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One cute pig curious on the camera
Image Credit: talsen - Adobe Stock

We Should Cheer the Pig-to-Human Heart Transplant

This is an amazing potential advance in organ transplant medicine. A pig’s heart — genetically modified to not be rejected as readily — has been transplanted into a dying human patient. Read More ›
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CRISPR-CAS9 gene editing complex from Streptococcus pyogenes.
Image Credit: molekuul.be - Adobe Stock

Bioethicist: Let Doctors Kill the Healthy by Harvesting Organs

We have entered the era of what I call “do harm medicine,” in which the concept of what constitutes harming the patient has become entirely malleable and subjective. I even wrote a book covering that subject. Read More ›
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A concept based on the Canadian healthcare system.
Image Credit: ungvar - Adobe Stock

Canada on Road to Outlaw ‘Organ Tourism’

Good for Canada — a sentiment I haven’t been able to make very often lately. But a Senate committee has unanimously passed a bill that would outlaw Canadians from entering the black market for organs overseas, an exploitive phenomenon sometimes called “organ tourism.” Read More ›