How ethical it is to remove a vital organ from a living human
being? Recent debate at state and federal levels on "proper" allocation of organ
donations has failed to address that critical question. The only issue at hand in
these discussions appears to be the "proper manner" in which the available
organs are distributed.
Until 1968, standard medical criteria were based on the clinical fact that a
person could not be pronounced dead as long as that person was still alive. In
other words, death was not declared unless the circulatory and respiratory
systems and the entire brain had been destroyed; i.e., no longer having the
capacity to function.
With the introduction of so-called "brain death" criteria, however,
everything changed. Today, a person who is not really dead can be pronounced
dead so that a vital organ can be excised for the purpose of transplantation.
It occurs to us that the real debate should not be centered on whether
distribution of vital organs is equitable, but rather whether the taking of such an
organ from a person exhibiting signs of life is moral. Perhaps we have forgotten
that a person who is dying is not dead; a person who is near death is not dead;
and a person who is alive deserves to be treated as such until the moment when
actual death has occurred.
A cadaver does not have a beating heart, a normal pulse, a normal blood
pressure, a normal color or a normal temperature. A cadaver is dead.
