NPR’s Morning Edition included a segment on the policy debate regarding organ procurement taking place June 24 and 25 at the Board meeting of the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network/United Network for Organ Sharing (OPTN/UNOS) in Richmond, Virginia. Not Dead Yet issued a press release on this subject last week: Not Dead Yet Urges Secretary Sebelius and Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network to Prohibit Organ Procurers from Pressuring Sick or Injured to Give Up on Living.
Rob Stein, the NPR Reporter, covered this issue in September 2011 when he wrote a piece for the Washington Post entitled “Changes in controversial organ donation method stir fears.”
According to his report today on NPR:
The board of directors of the United Network for Organ Sharing will open a two-day meeting at the organization’s headquarters in Richmond, Va., to consider new guidelines for donation after cardiac death.
Donation after cardiac death involves removing organs minutes after life-support has been stopped . . ..
They’re generating debate over when the possibility of organ donation should be raised with patients or their families. The guidelines say local hospitals and organ procurement organizations should decide individually how to handle that question.
“I’m worried about it,” says Dr. Stuart Youngner, a bioethicist at Case Western Reserve University, noting that there’s long been a clear line between the decision to discontinue care and to donate organs.
“From the beginning the organ transplantation establishment has recognized that you must keep them separate,” Youngner says. “You must keep the people who are taking care of and making decisions about the potential donor separate from those who are trying to get an organ to put it into the recipient.”
Even within OPTN/UNOS, there is disagreement with the proposed guideline, with the Ethics Committee holding to the previous standard and the Organ Procurement Committee advocating for a guideline that allows individuals and families to be approached about organ donation before a decision to withdraw life-support has been made.
The online NPR article quoted Not Dead Yet, although the audio broadcast did not:
The proposal is raising concerns among advocates for the disabled. “Pressure could be brought to bear on people to give up on saving their lives and give away their organs,” says Diane Coleman of the group Not Dead Yet, which seeks to protect rights of the disabled.
The online article and audio broadcast included some well articulated comments from Stephen Mikochik, a Temple University law professor with a disability who has previously weighed in on the organ procurement issues on behalf of the National Catholic Partnership on Disability.
. . . Stephen Mikochik, of Temple University’s law school, worries about certain situations, such as when parents rush to the hospital and discover a child has suffered severe brain injuries in a car accident.
“You’re going to be extremely upset. And if a physician comes in and says, ‘Look, the prognosis doesn’t look very good.’ And then a procurement officer comes in and says, ‘Well, look, let’s make something meaningful out of this.’ You might decide right then to agree to take the person off life-support so some of the organs can be harvested,” says Mikochik, who works with the National Catholic Partnership on Disability.
“The problem is that it could well be that your child will, you know, regain some consciousness,” he says. “There’s just no telling at that point.”
Mikochik’s letter to the OPTN/UNOS Board is available on the NCPD website.
Not Dead Yet also sent an Action Alert asking disability activists to email Health and Human Services Secretary Sebelius, who contracts OPTN/UNOS, and five PTN/UNOS Board officers to urge the adoption of a national standard that would protect people on life support from aggressive organ procurement practices. As of today, 117 disability activists emailed the requested letters. I don’t have any reports on the meeting yet, and I’m not sure how long it will take to learn the outcome, but stay tuned. This issue is not going away. – Diane Coleman