Professors Argue Its OK to Euthanize Patients to Harvest Their Organs
The first article that I wrote on organ donation was August 14, 2008 when I commented on an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) by Robert Troug and Franklin Miller.
Troug and Miller suggested that it is ethical to intentionally cause the death of a person, for the purpose of transplanting organs, if consent is obtained and when the person is unlikely to neurologically recover.
The current issue of the NEJM (Sept 6, 2018) features an article by Ian Ball, Robert Sibbald and Robert Troug. They argue that it is ethical to change the guidelines to enable organ donation by euthanasia, if consent is obtained. The authors of the article suggest that legalizing euthanasia creates new pathways for organ donation. The article states:
Although some patients may want to be sure that the organ procedure won’t begin before they are declared dead, others may want not only a...