News

By Hilary White

  TORONTO, March 14, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Edmonton Sun reported last week that a 44 year-old Ontario man, Rob Crawford, is planning on travelling across the country with his nine year-old son to raise awareness of organ donations. Crawford donated part of his liver to his sister-in-law, Marilyn Olivo-Crawford, who was suffering from liver failure due to Hepatitis C.

  He has agreed to represent Ontario’s organ donation foundation, the Trillium Gift of Life Network to encourage Canadians to sign organ donation cards and raise funds for transplant centres.

“Canadians are dying,” Crawford told the Sun, “because there is a critical shortage of organs.”

  With the ethics of organ donation still very much in dispute, however, some are seeing the promotion campaign as problematic. Crawford underwent what transplant doctors call “live donation,” in which a part of his liver was surgically removed and transplanted onto the liver of his sister-in-law where, it is hoped, the tissue will graft and regenerate normal liver function.

  Such live donation is possible in a few cases where organs can be removed without danger to the donor; whole kidneys, portions of the lung, liver, small bowel or pancreas.

  In large part, however, organ donation agencies such as Trillium focus their work on obtaining organs from patients who are dead or near death and the distinction is worrying traditional medical ethicists.

  The Trillium Gift of Life Network as well as many hospitals, endorses “Non-heart beating organ donation” (NHBD). Classical ethicists have objected that NHBD, also referred to as “donation after cardiac death” (DCD), allows for organs to be obtained from patients who may have a possibility of recovery. In NHBD, a person who is judged to be near death, but who may have measurable brain function, is removed from a ventilator. If he has not begun breathing unassisted and the heart stops for five minutes, death is pronounced and the organs are harvested by a waiting surgical team.

  As the Trillium Gift of Life Network puts it, “A DCD patient has no hope of survival or meaningful functional status, but does not meet brain death criteria.”

  Dr. John Shea, medical advisor to Campaign Life Coalition and a widely published writer on medical ethics, spoke to LifeSiteNews.com and cautioned that Crawford’s advocacy could be misleading. “If he is promoting organ donation based on his own experience of live donation, I have to question why he is promoting an organization that endorses such an ethically questionable practice as DCD.”

“People signing organ donor cards may not be getting the full information on just what they are agreeing to,” Shea added.

  Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
  Controversial Organ Donation Method Begins in Canada – Organs Extracted 5 Minutes after Heart Stops
  https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/jun/06062707.html

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