Patients approved for euthanasia should be allowed to ask doctors to kill them by removing their organs, a group of North American academics have argued.
In an article published by The New England Journal of Medicine, bioethicists Dr Robert D Truog and Dr Carter Winberg of Harvard Medical School, and Dr Ian Ball of Western University of Canada, said organs would be in a better condition if removed while a patient was still alive.
The authors called for jurisdictions where organ donation after euthanasia is legal — Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, and Canada — to consider allowing euthanasia by organ donation.
Truog, Winberg and Ball expressed frustration that current safeguards prevented “‘heart-beating’ euthanasia”, where death is “caused directly by removal of vital organs before cardiorespiratory function ceases”.
Truog told US media outlet NPR: “Why would it not be OK for patients to say, ‘I’ve chosen to die by a lethal injection. Isn’t there some way I can help others?’ They should be able to donate organs”.
He added: “I would say a more appropriate framework is that for patients who are choosing to die from euthanasia they could also choose to have euthanasia linked with organ donation.”
Have you ever seen a more slippery slope?