Do We Have the Right to End Our Lives?

I fear there is something horrible taking place in our culture. And it has been gradually happening over the last couple of decades or so. What is this horrible thing? We are becoming, more and more, a society that has stopped believing that there is never a situation in which we may kill an innocent human being in order to solve the difficulty of suffering.

I have to believe that, say, 50 years ago, when my parents were teenagers, American society took for granted that we would never look toward killing as a way out of even the hardest situations. We handle our troubles and our sorrows by pulling together, sticking with one another, being there for each other, doing all that we can for each other. And as a nation made up mostly of people who believe in Christ, we pray. We look to Jesus on the Cross. And we trust in divine providence even when we don't have all the answers.

Or, we used to.

We are more and more a nation that no longer believes that our lives do not rest, ultimately, in our own hands. Increasingly, we consider ourselves masters of our own lives. But do we have the right even to end our own lives? Yes, even if it is for the sake of cutting short our suffering?

The fate of our society as a civilized nation largely rests on the answer.

More specifically, and of particular relevance today, may we choose to end a human life by withdrawing nutrition and hydration (food and water) from someone, in order to put an end to suffering?

Well, do we still heed the commandment, "Thou Shall Not Kill"?

No matter how it is done, deliberately killing an innocent person is a direct violation of this bedrock commandment. It is not ours to choose when or how we die. Our life is a gift from God. We do not, in the ultimate sense, own our lives. We belong to God. And He tells us, thou shall not kill.

Would it be OK to go up to a hospital bed of someone in pain, put a pistol to his head, and kill him? Why not?

If this would not be OK, then why is it OK to decide to kill somebody by starving and dehydrating him to death? In both situations, the result is the same--a dead person. And in both cases, death is the desired result chosen by those who make it happen. The intention is to kill. The only difference is that killing by pistol is messier and quicker. Death by starvation and dehydration is much neater (no blood on the walls; no loud bang), and much slower (days or weeks instead of a mere fraction of a second). But morally speaking, whether you kill by pistol or kill by removing food and water--you are just as wrong. You are doing the same thing: killing the innocent, taking life into your own hands.

If we accept that we may take life into our own hands and therefore may choose to kill suffering people by keeping food and water from them, we are not far from just putting a gun to their heads. Why not just put them in a gas chamber? Why not just stick a knife in their throat? Why not just put a bag over their head? In the end, there is no real difference.

For the love of God, may we reaffirm that we are a decent, caring, compassionate, God-fearing society. May we come to our senses and realize how shockingly sick and downright evil it is to even think that we might choose to kill the innocent, by whatever means.

In other words, please do not kill your mother or father, grandmother or grandfather, by starving them and dehydrating them to death. This is not what decent human beings do to each other. We do not kill as a way to escape our pain. Part of what makes us a civilization rather than a brutal mob is that in the face of even the biggest of troubles we do not turn on each other or abandon each other; we turn toward one another, share each others' burdens, and lift each other up in prayer. We hold each others' hands, we wash each others' bodies, we place food in the mouths of those who cannot feed themselves and provide water to those who cannot drink unaided.

Do we still believe that God has a mysterious plan, though partly hidden, for each of our lives? Do we no longer realize that we did not give ourselves the gift of life? Do we not know that God loves each of us no matter what? Do we not understand that as soon as we accept, in any situation, that we may choose to kill the innocent as a way to solve our problems that we will have at that moment become an inhuman, barbaric, decaying society that has chosen a path of hopelessness and despair over love and compassion?

Thou Shall Not Kill???

Unless we do it in a slow, bloodless, quiet way that seems so easy, by holding back food and water and  providing pain medication so our target starves and dehydrates comfortably? In a sane world, this is called murder.

Muddled ideas about Life Sustaining Medical Treatment

I would like to return to a paragraph from the AAP's "Guidelines on Forgoing Life-Sustaining Medical Treatment," which I reproduced in my August 5 post about the AAP's approval of withholding nutrition and hydration from non-dying children:

Life-sustaining medical treatment encompasses all interventions that may prolong the life of patients. Although LSMT includes the dramatic measures of contemporary practice such as organ transplantation, respirators, kidney (dialysis) machines, and vasoactive drugs, it also includes less technically demanding measures such as antibiotics, insulin, chemotherapy, and nutrition and hydration provided intravenously or by tube.
[Guidelines on Forgoing Life-Sustaining Medical Treatment, pdf]

This description of what falls under LSMT is confused, for it does not make distinctions among interventions that have important fundamental differences.

First, a little background. The human body needs a constant supply of a few things from the external world in order to sustain life: air, water, and food. The body must receive these from outside itself, as it does not have its own internal supply of these things. These are necessary for life. Helping to provide or ensure access to air, food, and water, does not come under the purview of what it means to practice medicine. This is simply required of any moral person as among those things owed to other persons without qualification. In the judgment of a reasonable person, deliberately shutting off the supply of any of these necessary things to the point of causing death, would be murder. The difference is that shutting off air would bring about death the fastest, then water, then food. But, whether fast or slow, shutting off access to any of these three would, without exception, bring about death sooner or later. Killing someone slowly as compared to killing someone quickly does not make an act less murderous. (The Nazis used starvation bunkers in their concentration camps as a particularly cruel way to kill those whose deaths they intended to be a punishment and a warning to others. They would lock up the condemned without food or water and retrieve the bodies days later.)

In addition to a constant supply of air, water, and food, the human body, in order to sustain life, must also carry on in a coordinated fashion a large array of internally regulated physiological processes. A few of these include heartbeat and circulation, breathing, digestion, cleansing the blood of chemical waste products, regulating blood pressure, recognizing and destroying pathogens (potentially disease-causing agents such as viruses and bacteria), controlling the uptake of glucose from the blood, and many others. Any of these complex, internally controlled physiological processes can stop working properly for a variety of reasons. The practice of medicine aims to support or cure injured, diseased, or weakened physiological processes, returning them, if possible, to a healthy state.

Also, in order that bodily life might endure in a healthy state, the body needs to be sufficiently free of aberrations--abnormalities that might impair or destroy necessary bodily functions. For example, cancer.

Now, turn again to the paragraph above about life-sustaining medical treatment. As I see it, there are three categories of "intervention" in this statement. They are:

1. Assisting in delivering the exterior things all human bodies must continuously bring in to sustain life (air, food, and water). Thus, ventilators, feeding tubes, and intravenously supplied nutrition.

2. Assisting the body to restore to a state of healthy operation any physiological functions that have been compromised or damaged. Normally, these functions do not need outside help. This might be done pharmacologically, nutritionally, mechanically, electromagnetically, or surgically (or in combination). Thus, antibiotics, insulin, vasoactive drugs, organ transplantation, and dialysis.

3. Destroying, removing, or otherwise neutralizing aberrations (such as tumors) that threaten to seriously impair or ruin necessary functions. Thus, chemotherapy (also surgery and radiation).

We must do what we can to provide category one assistance as long as the body can still actually make use of air, food, and water, and in the case of food and water, as long as the body is not in a state of near death from causes other than a lack of food and water.

For categories two and three, we must use all ordinary means at our disposal in the service of life, taking into account the likely benefits vs. burdens. And in considering this, restoring the body to a condition in which it is not dying (that is, from something other than normal aging) is always a benefit compared to death. If a person is truly dying and death is near ("at death's door"), and death cannot be prevented but only minimally delayed, there is no absolute obligation to try to put off an inevitable death for as long as possible. However, it must be kept in mind that allowing (i.e. not aggressively trying to prevent) a near and certain death to unfold--as in "letting nature take its course"--is not in the same moral category as killing someone by commission or omission. A deliberately chosen action or inaction which is chosen because it will bring about death, is immoral killing.

There is a problem here, as I see it, with the use of the term "life-sustaining medical treatment." The term itself seems to imply that anything that is "life-sustaining" should by that fact also be considered "extraordinary" (as a Catholic analysis would use the term) in potentially fatal situations. It seems like the mere acknowledgment of an intervention as LSMT gives permission to consider it optional (i.e. non-obligatory) when death enters the picture as a possibility.

What this seems to me to allow is a severe downgrading of what used to be a presumption in favor of life as medical professionals discharge their obligations to society. Formerly, so long as there was a reasonable chance of saving a patient's life, physicians accepted an obligation to try their best to save life. Now, under the more recent approach, if death is merely a possibility (but not a certainty), physicians no longer have an obligation to try to save life. The mere labeling of a medical intervention as LSMT seems to contain tacit permission to choose to forgo it when death is possible. It's a thought process almost like this: this treatment has the possibility of prolonging life; this case has a chance of being fatal; this treatment is therefore optional and may be omitted even if for the purpose of making death certain. It is a horrendous perversion of the most fundamental values that until recently have underpinned the medical profession throughout Western civilization.

If this sort of muddled thinking becomes more and more common in the realm of medical ethics, it won't be long before the only treatments that will be considered obligatory for medical professionals to undertake will be some treatments that have a high potential to heal non-fatal conditions.

Killing Hospital Patients By a 2nd Disease

In my previous post I spoke about the immoral policy of the American Academy of Pediatrics to approve of withholding nutrition and hydration (or, antibiotics or insulin) from a very sick, injured, or disabled--but not dying--child for the express purpose of ending that child's life.

Now I would like to consider an example where such a policy would make it possible for medical personnel to approve of killing a hospitalized patient (child or adult; young or elderly) by means of a secondary (typically non-lethal) infection or otherwise usually treatable disease. This would not be considered killing by the AAP. However, in a Catholic moral analysis a person can indeed be guilty of killing--here, euthanasia by omission--by deliberately not treating a second disease process which, due to a primary pre-existing disease condition, would be too much for the patient's body to handle on its own in combination with the primary disease and so would be likely to cause death.

Secondary infections can occur which are a different (and not-necessarily lethal) disease process added on to the condition of an already present primary disease. With sound medical care, these can be treated and resolved or at least minimized while the more serious (lethal) primary disease condition remains.

For example, many patients in the hospital with advanced cancer have some sort of "central line" in place (a surgically installed intravenous line that permits intravenous access to the patient without needing to use peripheral IV lines in the arms that only last a few days and thus need frequent changing--not good for prolonged IV therapy, such as is needed for chemotherapy). Any IV line, including central lines, can become infected. In fairly rare circumstances, an IV infection can take hold in the patient's blood in a potentially lethal condition called "sepsis." A person already weakened by cancer, chemotherapy, and/or age, is very vulnerable to sepsis. In the case of a new IV site infection, skilled nursing staff should notice the early signs of infection appearing around any IV access line (whether central or peripheral). A typical medical response would be to remove the IV line at the infected site, and, if needed treat the patient with antibiotics to clear the infection. A new IV line could be established at a different location free from infection while antibiotic treatment is clearing up the old site. An infection from an IV that might spread to the blood is a different disease (treatable with antibiotics) than cancer.

Now, if a patient with cancer develops an infection and the medical staff makes a deliberate choice not to treat the infection (and the patient's body does not heal the infection on its own), that patient would die from infection--not from cancer--an infection which itself very well might not have been lethal if treated properly and quickly. In such a scenario the infection would have progressed to the point of becoming lethal because of the decision to omit antibiotics. In this way (e.g. not treating a secondary infection), physicians may actually choose to bring about the death of a patient by omission. Death, in such situations, would not have been caused by the original lethal disease but by a secondary (treatable) disease. By not treating the secondary disease doctors have a (convenient?) means of making death come sooner--perhaps much sooner--than it otherwise would have come. Is this morally much different from just shooting the person, like a farmer might do with an old sick dog?

This is a crude analogy, but it applies. If I walk up to a dying man who has sustained a lethal snake bite delivering ten times the amount of poison needed to kill a human and shoot him in the head, I have killed an innocent person (murder) and committed a grave offense against God, that person, all of human society, as well as my own dignity. Christians do not do this. This is never permissible under any circumstances. The time involved would be longer, but killing a man by withholding antibiotic treatment for a curable infection is not, morally speaking, very much different from putting a bullet in his head. One is faster, more gruesome, and more direct--but they both produce a dead body. Both cases would involve making a free choice with one's will to end the life of another human being using means known to be lethal in the given circumstances. For a Christian, such acts of commission or omission ought never be considered proper medical treatment. It makes a mockery of the medical arts. Healers are gradually turned into killers, convinced by leaders in their profession that they are doing a great service. Horrible.

The same might apply to insulin. Antibiotics and insulin are routine, ordinary care used to handle conditions which are manageable or curable when treated according to standard medical practices. If antibiotics or insulin (diabetic shock can progress to death without insulin) are deliberately withheld for the purpose of causing death, when giving them would prevent death, it is killing, not medical treatment, not benign care. It is taking life into our own hands and making ourselves God, deciding when life should end.

Please note, this does not mean there is never a situation in which antibiotics or insulin (or nutrition and hydration) could be withheld in a way that would be morally upright. I simply want to stress that we may not do something (or omit something) for the reason of ending someone's life. By listing antibiotics and insulin (as well as food and hydration) in the LSMT category the AAP makes euthanasia by omission (of these treatments) a more likely scenario, for it gives such actions the official stamp of approval of a respected medical organization.

American Academy of Pediatrics recommends when children can be killed

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), a respected and influential medical organization of some 60,000 members (ostensibly "Dedicated to the Health of all Children"), has recently published something which any morally sane American should consider highly disturbing, to say the least.

In the August, 2009 (Vol. 124, No. 2, pp. 813-822), issue of their monthly scientific journal, Pediatrics, the AAP published an article--a "clinical report"--titled, "Forgoing Medically Provided Nutrition and Hydration in Children." [available online here; pdf here] The two authors of this article (both medical doctors) are the present and immediate past chairpersons (their term; I prefer 'chairmen') of the AAP's Committee on Bioethics. And so this article represents the current point of view of the bioethics experts of the American Academy of Pediatrics on the subject of withholding food and water (i.e. nutrition and hydration) from living children. From what I can gather from their web site (their "Clinical Reports" index, here, which includes this article, is listed under the heading of "AAP Policy"), this represents official policy of the AAP. At the very least, this will be influential among pediatric medical professionals. To some degree it may represent already established opinion among them.

In the conclusions section of the article is the following: "The primary focus in decision-making should be the interests of the child." What does the AAP consider in the interests of the child? When do they say a physician may withhold food and water?

Medically provided fluids and nutrition may be withdrawn from a child who permanently lacks awareness and the ability to interact with the environment. Examples of such children include children in a persistent vegetative state or children with anencephaly. [conclusions, no. 6]

I stress loudly that such children are not necessarily dying! A persistent vegetative state, especially, is not a lethal condition--imminent death is not in the prognosis for PVS by itself. The AAP thinks it is morally permissible to kill children who are not dying, but severely injured, by withholding nutrition and hydration. They do not call this killing. But in a sound moral analysis, it certainly is.

Further, the article states, "Because individuals in a persistent vegetative state are unaware of themselves and their environment, the provision of medically provided fluids and nutrition does not confer them benefit and may be withdrawn." This position is essentially utilitarian. It does not assume that human life and human existence is, in itself, essentially good and valuable. It reduces the value of human life to something dependent upon the awareness of the individual. This is an extremely dangerous and morally bankrupt position to take. The AAP now holds that if life isn't worth living according to its understanding of a worthy, beneficial life, then it is a legitimate option to end the patient's life by not giving them nutrition and hydration. Such is the state of bioethics among the leadership of mainstream medical organizations.

It is helpful to have the following background information: the AAP considers providing nutrition and hydration (food and water), by feeding tube (a tube going into the stomach or small intestine) or intravenously, to be "life sustaining medical treatment" (LSMT). Here is a quote from AAP official policy:

Life-sustaining medical treatment encompasses all interventions that may prolong the life of patients. Although LSMT includes the dramatic measures of contemporary practice such as organ transplantation, respirators, kidney (dialysis) machines, and vasoactive drugs, it also includes less technically demanding measures such as antibiotics, insulin, chemotherapy, and nutrition and hydration provided intravenously or by tube.
[Guidelines on Forgoing Life-Sustaining Medical Treatment]

Thus, leaders among our pediatric specialists officially consider antibiotics, insulin, and food and water (given by tube into the stomach or by a smaller tube into a vein) to be "Life Sustaining Medical Treatment." In other words, these are considered interventions that may, under some circumstances (some not life threatening), be forgone. A very serious question must be asked: Do they approve forgoing such treatments for the sake of bringing about death--where it would be understood (even if not stated explicitly) that death would be a direct result (as contrasted with allowing an already inevitable death to take place by forgoing treatment)? The answer, clearly, is yes (see above).

Why is this a huge concern? Because the medical community does not seem to recognize the moral difference between allowing certainly impending death to happen, death which will come as a direct result of an incurable lethal disease or injury, vs. deliberately killing the patient by keeping food and water from him or by omitting other routine and probably effective antibiotic or insulin treatments for secondary and not-necessarily lethal conditions. We are in serious trouble when our doctors do not recognize the difference between choosing to stop fighting against imminent death and choosing to kill.

The official AAP web site states [see AAP Fact Sheet] that their mission is "to attain optimal physical, mental, and social health and well-being for all infants, children, adolescents, and young adults." How do they pursue this mission? "One of the AAP’s major activities is to further the professional education of its members. Continuing education courses, annual scientific meetings, seminars, publications and statements from committees, councils, and sections form the basis of a continuing postgraduate educational program." [Fact Sheet]. In other words, they educate and influence pediatric medical professionals, in part, according to the considered positions formed by their various national appointed committees. One of these is the Committee on Bioethics whose chairperson and immediate past chairperson wrote this article.

Should this matter to Catholics (and to any Christian)? Absolutely! Euthanasia, however well-intentioned (i.e. killing so as to end suffering), is never permissible. Killing the innocent is killing the innocent--and never OK. There is a commandment (you know, the Ten Commandments) against it. Here is the definition of euthanasia used by the Catholic Church: "an action or an omission which of itself or by intention causes death, in order that all suffering may in this way be eliminated." [Declaration on Euthanasia]. Choosing not to give nutrition and hydration in the case of a non-lethal situation where food and water can still be assimilated by the body is an omission; it is a choice made for a specific purpose--to cause death. Likewise for antibiotics and insulin.

Christians do not do this. It is never permissible under any circumstances. Our calling is never to take another person's life, but rather to provide a self-giving, person-oriented service of love and compassion. We are to do all we can to comfort others, lessen their suffering, and to accompany them in their suffering--to suffer with others in solidarity as best we can. We are to show those who suffer by our caring presence that we love them, and that they are worth being with no matter what is happening to them. To do this well, we need grace. May we pray for it, and may God grant it to us.

Culpability and Intent in Relation to Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

"If you have taken the drug, wonder-dundersol, and then had a tear in your Achilles tendon, contact us! You may be eligible for payment!"

Have you seen any of the commercials in this genre? Some law firm announcing that there is a big lawsuit underway, trying to gather up all the plaintiffs they can to increase the pile of money they can squeeze out of a drug company.

Something very damaging to our society is happening. As a society, we no longer seem to assume good faith on behalf of our fellow Americans. For example, if a new drug ends up having a nasty side effect, a whole lot of people seem all-too-willing to assume that "somebody is to blame." Someone must have done something wrong; somebody must have wanted to cut corners; somebody was incompetent.

Well, maybe. But maybe not.

Producing a new drug is an extremely complex and difficult endeavor. Not many compaines in the entire world can do it consistently. There are many, many things that have to be done and many things that could go wrong. If a new drug ends up having a bad side effect that was not foreseen, it does not mean necessarily that somebody messed up. It just might be a result of the fact that developing drugs is really hard and the drugmakers cannot look into a crystal ball and predict how everything is going to go at every step along the way.

If someone wants to bring a lawsuit against a drugmaker, there should be genuine culpability involved for whatever went wrong. This has to involve intent on some level. If I am making a new drug, and doing everything meticulously as I should, not skipping any steps, doing all the testing carefully, there still could be negative side effects. The drug might be from a natural product, and this product might contain some things that have an unforeseen bad effect in some people that was not uncovered in the development and testing process. In such a situation, I would not be culpable (worthy of blame) for what was simply in the drug naturally, if I carefully followed all the expected procedures for developing and testing the new drug. You can't catch absolutely every possible negative thing all of the time.

If I were a drugmaker, and I was incompetent in some way, or deliberately cut some things short, or did not test properly, etc., then, I might be culpable for not finding out about a negative effect of the drug.

I wonder if anyone who suffers from a bad effect of a new drug cares nowadays about the difference between the above two situations? In the first, even though the drug had a negative effect, the drug maker would not be to blame--he did everything right and tried his very best to produce a good, safe product. However, in the second case, the drug maker did not do everything right. In this case the drug maker would be culpable (at least partly) for the negative effect. This is because somewhere along the way there was an intention--a deliberate decision made with a certain end in mind--to do something (or not do something) that the drug maker knew was not as it should be, yet he did it (or omitted it) anyway.

Same result: a drug with negative effects. But, different culpabilties. In one case the drug maker would be culpable; in the other, not. The difference is in the intention of the drug maker.

We are going to sue ourselves into financial and social ruin if we cannot rediscover this basic difference and accept that it matters.

This applies not only to drugs, but any situation where there has been a negative medical outcome. Was someone truly to blame? If not, then we sould not be suing.

Sometimes, bad things happen and we cannot do anything about it. And, there is not always someone to blame. We need to stop acting as though we have some right to pin blame on somebody simply because we are suffering. We need to grow up, and stop acting as though we are the center of the universe. We need to assume that our fellow human beings have the best intentions in what they do unless we have good reason (and not merely because we want to blame somebody) to conclude otherwise.

The Wonder of the Womb; The Ignobility of IVF

I would like to reflect again on a bioethics-related topic. It has to do with the human womb. (In medical terms, the 'uterus.' But, 'womb' seems a more personal term so I'll use this.) More completely, my topic here deals first with conjugal union as the only appropriate means of bringing about a new human life, and second, with the womb as the only appropriate place for that life to be brought about.

A few months ago at the blog of a friend the situation of the "Octomom" was being discussed. In the midst of this discussion someone stated the opinion that she saw nothing undignified about conceiving a child through in-vitro fertilization (IVF). Another commenter made the astute observation that the IVF process results in "life conceived in the unloving confines of a glass petri dish." I thought this was an excellent and very thought-provoking phrase; and right on target.

I share here some of the ideas I gave then about the contrast between human life conceived how and where God planned for it to be conceived--through the marital embrace and in the womb of a woman--vs. life conceived in a petri dish (as in IVF). . . .

The only appropriate means for conceiving life. Sexual union between persons has inherent meaning. It is full of meaning. In a proper context (spouses who love each other), the meaning of this act is, "I give myself fully, completely to you--I love you, I give myself to you, I commit myself to you, holding nothing back." A husband and wife say this to each other through the built-in symbolism of marital intercourse. With IVF, the creation of the child is divorced from the inherent meaning of conjugal union between spouses. But the two physical events (sexual union and the creation of a child) are meant to be always united together because their meanings are so inherently one.

There is no symbolic meaning built into the act of using lab equipment to unite an egg and sperm in a petri dish corresponding to this profound, built-in, natural (and God-ordained) symbolism of intercourse. The IVF lab procedure simply does not posses the great meaning of natural marital union.

In other areas of life we have no problem seeing the difference between the inherent meaning of human physical gestures and less human, technical processes. Is a physical hug between friends the same in significance as saying hello on Facebook? Technological processes simply have no ability to carry the meaning that is woven into thoroughly human, personal acts. And what more profound and deeply human, personal act is there than a husband and wife giving themselves to each other in love, freely, in the marital embrace?


The only appropriate place for conceiveing life. Sometimes we Christians (perhaps Catholics especially) are accused of a kind of inappropriate womb-worship because of the way some of us privilege the womb as the only place proper for the beginning of human life. We do not worship the womb (to do so would be a pagan thing not a Christian thing) when we point out that the womb is the privileged place God designed for the special and unique event of bringing new human life into the world. God loves human beings in a special and privileged way among all the earth. He would not provide anything less than a very special place for the hidden realm wherein He would lovingly "knit together" (see Psalm 139) the fragile and beautiful beginnings of every human being. There is no impropriety in drawing attention to this beautiful truth. As the place where new life should begin, being more fitted to the inherent, God-given dignity of every human person--hands down, the womb beats a glass petri dish every time!

Indeed, without being inappropriate, I think that the womb certainly is worthy of particular reverence because it is a three-dimensional living canvas in which the master artist of the universe lovingly forms and brings to life His greatest and most cherished creations. Would it be strange to suggest the womb is somewhat like a custom designed studio, perfectly suited for what the master artist who designed it intends to create there?

Only one place was made by God for the purpose of sheltering and nurturing nascent human lives. He could have made various other places. But he made only one: the womb. This is the sacred place He made within which He might reach down and bestow His divine power of creation upon the spiritual-physical union of husband and wife. It seems almost crazy to me to suggest the idea that an inert, non-living object such as a glass dish in a lab could ever be just as appropriate a canvas for God's creative power to touch as the living womb of a woman who is herself precious to and beloved by God!

The ultimate purpose of our lives is to become living vessels of divine grace--each a unique, living jewel of divine truth and love--sharing as a family in the bliss of the heavenly paradise. Our Father in heaven arranged the world in such a way that we--creatures with such high dignity and transcendent purpose--should come into being in a context worthy of the nobility He has given our lives. This context is that we should appear on the stage of existence through a loving soul-body union of our mother and father. And the only place adequate to the great worth of each of us as we begin the earliest stages of our fragile life is the womb of our mother. How beautiful this is!

"Organ Shortage"--What Does This Phrase Indicate?

As this blog goes on there will probably be certain themes that will recur with some degree of regularity. One of these themes will be issues in the area of bioethics (which is closely related to pro-life themes).

I have noticed something that strikes me as odd about the language used in articles about organ donation. At some point, usually the phrase, "organ shortage," or something similar is mentioned. Sometimes, concern is expressed over a rising need for organ donations.

Now, I am not against, in principle, that organs can be donated (provided that death is not hastened, or, that the donor is not in fact killed as a part of the "procurement" process). But I find it somehow off-base, all this talk of "shortages" of organs.

If there is a shortage of something, it means the supply of something has been lessened that normally is available in larger quantities. And this term, "shortage," also usually implies you are speaking of a resource which is normally available and is seen as something that is ordinarily used in an average person's life. There can be shortages of water, oil, gas, food, etc.

But, is it really appropriate to say there are "shortages" of organs that could be used by persons whose organs are failing?

If I were deathly ill and needed a new liver because mine was shot but I died first because one never came available, would that mean I died because of a "shortage" of livers available for donation? No! I would have died of the liver problem. No one dies because of a liver "shortage." But people do die from cirrhosis.

I would like to strenuously point out and affirm that donating organs is an entirely gratuitous thing; it should never be expected nor obligatory for anyone.

There is never a shortage of organs. What there is, is a certain incidence of diseases or injuries that damage organs enough so as to render them unable to function properly. But because organ donation requires either the death of the donor, or, at the very least a serious diminishing of the full natural bodily integrity of the donor (eg. in a kidney donation), organs should never be spoken of as though they are simply another among the many natural resources that have a typically expected supply level, such that there could be such a thing as a "shortage." It can make sense to say a drought produced a shortage of water. But an analogy to organs does not apply. Unless we are willing to say there is some number that is a usual amount of livers we should expect to be available for transplanting (from dead people into living people), we can't say sensibly that an outbreak of hepatitis produced a shortage of livers available for donation (since the number of needed livers would rise and therefore the number of people on an organ donation waiting list for new livers would likewise go up).

My underlying concern here is that when we speak of organ "shortages," we only take account of those who are ill and would benefit from a new organ. We typically ignore the other one-half of the reality of the situation which is the fact that in order for many (though not all) types of organ donations to occur, someone has to die in order to make an organ available. Taking this other half of the reality into account, if it were proper to say there is such a thing as organ "shortages," then this would be in effect the same as saying there is a shortage of people dying in enough numbers to permit their organs to be harvested for use in others' still-living bodies. But I hope my point is clear--we ought never say there is a shortage of the dying, and so too, we ought never say there are organ shortages (shortages which may require death to make the organ available).

Organ donation is an unexpected, out of the ordinary event. The character of the act of organ donation is never one of obligation, but of gratuity. It seems to me we are harming our culture in calling a disparity between the numbers of devastatingly diseased or injured organs and the number of organs available for donation, a "shortage." It's almost as though we are saying we should be eager for more death so we can save more lives.