Beware: Killing for Organs, Taking Organs From Living People

I have been warning for several years that many in bioethics and the organ transplant community hope to legalize killing for organs, that is, taking organs from the living. The latest example comes in the Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics by Canadian philosophy professor (of course!) Walter Glannon.

It’s a long article and I don’t have space here to deal with every aspect. But a few points: First, he claims that all decisions about organ donation and the treatment of patients are kept strictly segregated. From, “The Moral Insignificance of Death in Organ Donation:”

All transplant policies and protocols require that decisions about withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment be separated from decisions about organ donation, procurement, and transplantation.