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I wrote recently
about the controversial news that surgeons in Denver had taken organs,
including the hearts, from newborn infants who had died in intensive
care.
In recent years the retrieval of organs from patients whose hearts have
stopped (so-called donation after cardiac death, DCD) has become more
popular. In part this is because of the problem that there is a
shortage of organ donors who are brain dead. It is also because of the
recognition that when patients die after removal of life support, their
organs may still be viable for transplantation.
In the New England Journal of Medicine yesterday, doctors from Denver reported on three controversial cases of heart transplantation from newborn infants. These cases are striking for several reasons. They were examples of so-called ‘donation after cardiac death’ (DCD), an increasingly frequent source of organs for transplantation, but done very rarely in newborns. They are controversial because the transplanted organs were hearts that were ‘restarted’ in recipients after they had stopped in the donor. Transplant surgeons waited only a relatively short period after the donor’s heart had stopped (75 seconds) before starting the organ retrieval process. These transplants raise serious questions about the diagnosis and definition of death.
Read More »When the heart stops: harvesting organs from the newly (nearly) dead
In Australia recently, there has been heated debate about a series of
photographs of naked and semi-naked children by photographer Bill
Henson. The debate was reignited this month when Art Monthly, a major
Australian art magazine, decided to put a picture of a nude 6 year old
girl on its front cover. Politicians have attacked the photographs and
the magazine’s editors
Making headlines last week, Melbourne bioethicist Rob Sparrow argued that in order to create the best future for their children, parents should select only girl children or hermaphrodites. He imagined a “post-sex” world in which males are no longer conceived, and women use frozen sperm, or artificial gametes to reproduce.
In Germany this week, and in Australia recently, there has been public
concern and significant media attention about the actions of euthanasia
activists. A former government official and lawyer, Roger Kusch, went
public in Germany with a video of an elderly woman who he had helped to
die. In Australia, Phillip Nitschke has been criticised for his
involvement and subsequent comments about the death of Graeme Wylie a
man suffering from Alzheimer’s disease whose partner and close friend
have been found guilty of manslaughter.
Opponents of euthanasia have used these cases to argue against liberalisation of laws on assisted suicide or euthanasia.
In Canada this week, an 84 year old man died after 9 months of treatment
in an intensive care unit. He had severe brain damage and multi-organ
failure, but his family sought a legal injunction to prevent doctors in
the intensive care unit from withdrawing life-support. Over the course
of his long intensive care stay, intensive care beds at a major trauma
centre were closed so that nurses could used instead to support his
care, and three doctors resigned from the hospital in protest at being
required to provide what they felt was ‘unethical’ treatment.
Read More »When autonomy trumps sense: the costs of refusal to allow withdrawal of life support.
It has been reported in the newspapers today that in many parts of the country smokers have been refused access to in-vitro-fertilisation treatment. This appears to be contrary to the national evidence-based guidelines for fertility treatment. Is this unfair?
A medicine for children that has been shown to be effective in a wide range of conditions is to be released soon in the UK and is already available in the US. It has been exhaustively studied, and has no side effects. It is extremely cheap to produce, and will be readily available. Yet GPs, academics and ethicists are up in arms about the new drug. What is all the fuss about?
The Daily Mail reports this morning that 8 clone-offspring cows have been born in the UK. Also today, the first survey of public opinion on ‘clone farming’ has been released indicating significant unease and opposition to the idea of meat products or milk from cloned sources.
There are strict prohibitions on reproductive cloning for humans in most countries (for example, the recently debated HFEA bill in the UK, and the Human reproductive Cloning Act 2001). However there are few, if any, constraints on the cloning of animals. Is this the start of a new era of animal exploitation?
