Some hard thinking about organ donation and the way we die, from members of Oxford University research centres. The authors propose that those who want to should be allowed to choose not simply to be allowed to die (in which case organs usually cannot be used), but to actively have their organs removed under general anaesthetic in optimum conditions, to save potentially thousands of lives a year.

Donation of organs like the heart, lungs, and liver is only possible when patients die in controlled circumstances in hospital. Most patients who die in hospital do not meet “brain death” criteria and are not able to donate their organs even if they would have wanted to.

However, there is another potential way of donating organs that we should consider. When patients are seriously ill in intensive care and not likely to recover doctors and families often decide to stop life support and let the patient die. 5000 patients in the UK per year die in these circumstances.

This is a proposal for those 5000 patients each year who will have their life saving treatment stopped. We can give them the option in advance to donate their organs if they are ever going to have their treatment limited because their prognosis is deemed hopeless. If the person agreed in advance to be such an organ donor, and an independent committee confirmed that the patient’s prognosis was hopeless and treatment should be stopped, the patient could be taken to an operating theatre in controlled circumstances, given a general anaesthetic and have their organs removed. The surgical procedure would be a form of euthanasia. We could call it “organ-donation euthanasia”. This option would give people the best chance of ensuring that their organs do not go to waste after their death. It would also prevent the patient from suffering after life support was withdrawn. It would harm noone, and would potentially benefit a number of seriously ill patients in organ failure.

http://www.practicalethicsnews.com/practicalethics/2010/05/organ-donation-euthanasia.html

The BHA campaigns for the legalisation of assisted dying for the terminally ill.