By Gudrun Schultz
TORONTO, Ontario, April 23, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A proposal to institute a presumed consent law in Ontario for organ donations was rejected by an expert panel this week, after doctors said they don’t want to be seen as “organ-seizing ghouls,” the Toronto Star reported April 20.
The Citizens Panel on Increasing Organ Donations was appointed last year by Ontario Health Minister George Smitherman to consult with Ontarians on how to increase the availability of organs for transplant in the province. Surveys were conducted to evaluate public views on a variety of proposals, including a presumed consent law. Such a measure would permit the harvesting of organs and tissues from those declared “legally dead” unless they had previously signed a form withdrawing their consent. A lack of consensus on what constitutes legal death, and the increasing acceptance of such controversial definitions for legal death as “non-beating heart” death has raised concerns that individuals may be vulnerable to premature organ seizure while there is still hope of recovery.
A report from the Panel said the public is not in favour of a presumed consent law, and would prefer to see more attention directed towards increasing live donations of kidneys and liver lobes, including financial aid and job protection for donors during recovery from surgery.
Health Minister Smitherman said the department would release a plan soon on increasing living donors to address the waitlist for kidneys and livers, the most frequently needed organs for transplant.
“I think the report gives us a particularly strong boost on that point, to do a more effective job at supporting those who are willing to make such a big commitment to another human being through the gift of an organ,” Smitherman said.
The panel also recommended, however, that every hospital in Ontario should institute policies permitting organ donation after cardiac death (DCD), which it stated could increase the availability of organs for donation by up to 25 percent, since “donations from the brain dead cannot meet the need.”
Cardiac death donations have been condemned by critics as an ethically troubling attempt to increase organ harvesting at the expense of vulnerable patients who may be killed by having their organs removed before they have actually died.
While the report emphasizes the fundamental rule that “the recovery of organs must not be the cause of death,” concerns remain over DCD because of the speed necessary to harvest the organs before they begin to deteriorate, increasing the chances that the patient might not be given opportunity to recover before being declared “dead”.
Read the full report from the Citizens Panel:
https://www.panelonorgandonations.on.ca/report/en/_pdf/Report_of_the_Citizens_Panel_on_Increasing_Organ_Donations.pdf
See related LifeSiteNews coverage:
Ontario NDP Introduces Organ Donor Bill Which Presumes Consent of all Dying
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/feb/06021602.html
Questions Answered on Organ Donation: Interview with Dr. John B. Shea M.D.
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/feb/06021709.html
Deaths now Automatically Reported to Organ Donation Program
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/mar/06032303.html