organ donors

Geewhatasurprise: Hospitals Harvest Organs From Living Patients

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Waaay back in 1978, the film version of physician/novelist Robin Cook’s science fiction novel “Coma” (above) gave audiences the heebie-jeebies about being operated on. An “ends-justifies the means” chief of surgery had devised a diabolical way to have fresh organs ready to become life-saving transplants: one specially rigged operating room turned healthy-ish patients into brain dead victims (A young Tom Selleck was one of them!), and they ended up in a storage facility where their bodies were kept fresh and breathing until hearts, lings, livers or kidneys were needed.

Haven’t you always assumed that hospitals sometimes took essential organs from organ donors who were still alive, if barely? I have friends who aren’t organ donors specifically for that reason, and, yes, most of them remember “Coma.”

From an HHS press release this week:

Continue reading →

Gee, Could Massachusetts Democrats Come Up With A MORE Unethical Bill?

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Upwg6JMtyCg&t=51s

[You know,  writing this blog of late has made me feel like I’m Uma Thurman in “Kill Bill I,” fighting O-Ren Ishii’s (Lucy Liu) personal army, The Crazy 88’s. The ethics stories just get worse and worse, especially from the world of government and politics, and they keep on coming. The mission of this blog is to, in some small way, try to encourage ethical analysis and sensitivity in the culture of a nation uniquely dependent on it, and all I see is the ethics in our culture, especially in the professions (which exist to be trusted) and our institutions (all of them) deteriorating rapidly and seemingly deliberately. The effort feels hopeless. Maybe a better analogy than The Bride’s mass battle in “Kill Bill I” is Viking king Ragnar (Ernest Borgnine) fighting gleefully and futilely in a pit full of hungry wolves in “The Vikings.” After all, Uma wins her fight. But Ethics Alarms is not directed by Quentin Tarantino.

What prompts these musings? This item from the State of my birth: Massachusetts Democrats have offered a bill giving prison inmates reduced sentences when they donate their kidneys and bone marrow. State Reps. Carlos Gonzalez and Judith Garcia came up with this monstrosity, which aims to create “The Bone Marrow and Organ Donation Program” within the Massachusetts Department of Corrections. Prisoners would be able to shave between 60 days to a year off their sentences. 

Talk about killing bills—I’d love that bill as a hypothetical in an ethics class, though I would think it might be too easy for anyone old enough to vote. In The Guardian’s story, we read that the bill “has raised ethical concerns.” YA THINK??? Continue reading →

Update: “The Kidneys of Orlac”

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

He will die, not with his boots on, but with his kidneys in...

He will die, not with his boots on, but with his kidneys in…

One of the best threads Ethics Alarms has ever hosted occurred in response to the November 2013 post, “The Kidneys of Orlac,” which discussed the strange case of the Ohio death row resident who wanted to donate his organs to ill relatives. The issue generated an Ethics Quiz, a follow-up poll (“The Amityville Kidney”) involving the related issue of whether the recipient of a murderer’s organs had a right to know their creepy origin, and a terrific Comment of the Day, which was just one of the COTD-worthy submissions.

I had forgotten about the story until Mark Draughn raised it again at Windy Pundit in the context of criticizing bioethicists, one of whom had what Mark considered a particularly misbegotten argument against the transplants (I agree with Mark about that argument, but I also oppose giving condemned prisoners the privilege of donating organs to loved ones, or anyone at all.) This led me to review original post, which led me to re-read the comments.

I also discovered the resolution of the dilemma, which occurred at the end of last month. Ronald Phillips will not be allowed to donate his organs, because he wouldn’t have enough time to recover from the operation before his execution.  Ah, yes, the old “You have to be in tip-top shape before we can kill you, or it isn’t really punishment”  Catch 22! Ethics, you see, had nothing to do with the bureaucratic resolution here, just the letter of the law, rules, and bureacrats refusing to look for the best solution in an anomalous situation, rather than the one they could reach on auto-pilot. As a result, nobody made a reasoned determination about what is right, or what capital punishment really signifies, or apparently even tried. That is how so many government decisions are made, and that, my friends, is far scarier than having the kidneys of a killer.

 

Comment of the Day: “Ethics Quiz: The Kidneys of Orlac”

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

But first, a last act of altruism...

But first, a last act of altruism?

The presumptive winner of the annual Ethics Alarms award for “Commenter of the Year” in 2013, texagg04,  has delivered a Comment of the Day expanding the topic of the post regarding a condemned prisoner in Ohio who wrangled a postponement of his execution so he could donate his organs to relatives. Here is  texagg04’s  take on “Ethics Quiz: The Kidneys of Orlac.” I’ll have some comments at the end.

“First, a murderer or other capital criminal being held responsible for his or her conduct seems to be in conflict with the same individual being allowed to display charity when you say they  forfeited their freedom, all of it, with their commission of a  capital crime. I’m not so sure it should be viewed from that angle.

Punishment serves a variety of purposes. Some petty crimes receive punishment designed to compensate, as best as can be, the victim – the victim being dead, capital punishment does not serve this purpose. Some crimes are of an anti-social nature, and the apt punishment seeks to rehabilitate or reconcile the perpetrator to the community. Capital crimes are so heinous that we have determined that the perpetrator must be completely cut off from society, through their death. In this case, the punishment does nothing for the victim OR for the criminal; the punishment is designed solely for the benefit of society.

If the criminal wishes to donate his/her organs to (what we must assume is to salve their own conscience – even though we can, probably, cynically assume is just a delaying tactic), we should not care one bit. They are gaining no material benefit from the community, nor are they engaging in any direct interaction with the community – so the act of cutting them off from the community as part of the punishment is still complete. Continue reading →

Ethics Poll: The Amityville Kidney

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

"Wait---you're going to put THAT inside me???"

“Wait—you’re going to put THAT inside me???”

In the comments to the post The Kidneys of Orlac, Texagg04 raises a fascinating angle that I had not considered. I have previously written, regarding state regulations that do not require realtors or sellers to disclose that a grisly murder or six occurred on a property, that a purchaser has the right to know about such conditions that may bother him personally, and that regardless of the laws involved, there is an ethical duty inform  a potential purchaser know that he is buying the site of the Amityville Horror (for example). Texagg04 suggests..

“Much like real estate agents ought to reveal that a house had a grisly murder in it, I’d submit that recipients of organ donations of this kind should get to be informed of the donor’s convictions.”

Hmmm. I’m not so sure. One of the reasons for my views about the death houses is that they may be difficult for the uninformed buyer to sell later if the home’s history is known or becomes well known. Also, there are always alternatives to buying a particular house—given a choice between the site of a murder and a similar house with no such history, I might opt for the latter—I’ve seen too many of the “Paranormal Experiences”  and “The Grudge” movies, I guess. But with donated organs, the options are more limited. Maybe not telling the recipient that he has the heart of the Green River Killer is the fair and kind thing to do.

Let’s vote!

Comment of the Day: “Ethics Chess Lesson: The Tale of the Kidney and the Ungrateful Boss”

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

New commenter Christine has a valuable personal experience to relate, as an individual who donated a kidney to a stranger herself.  The main thrust of her post covers a topic that I have written on before but did not mention in this case, though I should have. Someone who performs a kind and generous act counting on rewards, copious thanks and gratitude, is  doing it for the wrong reasons. The act itself is all that matters. Certainly, gratitude is the right way to respond to generosity, but an act done in anticipation of personal benefits isn’t really altruistic. It is opportunistic. This is a cliché to be sure, but true nonetheless: the generous act must be its own reward.

Here is Christine’s Comment of the Day on the post, Ethics Chess Lesson: The Tale of the Kidney and the Ungrateful Boss.

I want to also commend Christine for following the comment policies, which many of the new visitors here who commented on this post did not do. I prefer full named on posts, but I only require that I am informed of  every commenter’s real name and have a valid e-mail address within a reasonable time of their first submitted comment. One way or the other virtually all of the regular commenters here have managed to do this, and it makes a difference, even in my responses. I regard such commenters as collaborators , not just marauders, and most of the time, I treat them accordingly:  tgt, Steven, Lianne, Margy, Glenn, Tim, both Michaels, Karl, Neil, Karla, Rick, blameblakeart, Barry, gregory, Eric, Curmudgeon, Eeyore, Julian, King Kool, Joshua, Jay, Tom, Bill, Danielle, Elizabeth, Patrice, Ed, Bob, The Ethics Sage and Jeff…I know there are others.   Thanks to all of you for letting me know who you are.

Now, Christine: Continue reading →

Ethics Chess Lesson: The Tale of the Kidney and the Ungrateful Boss

/ Jack Marshall / 50 Comments

Ethics chess is complicated, but ignore it at your peril!

Ethics chess is the process by which one considers the likely chain of events that follow from an act, and tries to predict the ethical dilemmas that may result before they occur. Debbie Stevens and Jackie Brucia didn’t play ethics chess. This is what happened to them.

When  Stevens was exploring the possibility of returning to the Atlantic Automotive Group, where she had worked previously, she met with Brucia, her former and potential boss, and somehow got on the topic of Brucia’s health problems. She needed a kidney transplant, and had found a donor, though it was not yet certain that the kidney would be hers. Stevens said that she might be willing to contribute her own kidney if that donor didn’t work out.

Later, Stevens was hired by Brucia,and two months later, in January of 2011,  Brucia called Stevens into her office and told her that she had lost her organ donor. “Were you serious when you said you would be willing to give me one of yours?’ Brucia asked.  “Sure, yeah,” Stevens says now. “She was my boss, I respected her. It’s just who I am. I didn’t want her to die.’’ It wasn’t exactly a direct donation, but Stevens donated her kidney to a stranger who matched up well with it so Brucia could be advanced on the list and get a better matched kidney from another source. Nonetheless, Brucia got a healthy kidney because Steven’s gave up one of her own. Continue reading →

“Grow Your Own Marrow Donor” Ethics and Consequentialism: The Ayala Family Saga

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

Anissa Ayala and her custom-made bone marrow donor

Once again, the fans of that ethically corrosive twin of  “the ends justifies the means,” consequentialism, were holding court in the mass media, as the “Today Show” revisited a two-decade old ethical outrage to declare that it was all perfectly fine after all…because it worked.

Thus does television, itself dominated by ethically-dim writers, producers and stars, corrupt the public. So here we go again:

Does the fact (if it indeed is a fact) that Osama bin Laden capture and execution was facilitated by torture make torture less ethically wrong?

No.

Do the fortuitous results of any action that was unethical from its inception change the nature of that conduct from unethical to ethical.

Again, no.

Is conceiving a child solely to provide donor bone marrow to her cancer-stricken older sister ethically acceptable as long as the sister’s cancer is cured?

Absolutely not!  But to listen to the “Today Show,” and revoltingly, the “Today Show’s” resident medical correspondent Dr. Nancy Snyderman, it is not only ethically acceptable but laudable. Because it worked.

Twenty years ago, Abe and Mary Ayala were desperate because Anissa, their 16-year-old daughter, had been diagnosed with leukemia. Chemotheraphy proved ineffective, and neither the Ayalas nor their son was a compatible bone marrow donor. The Ayalas had long before decided that two children were enough; Abe had a vasectomy. But then Mary came up with the idea of having another child in the hopes that it would be a bone marrow donor who could save Anissa’s life. Continue reading →