{"id":241405,"date":"2026-07-27T20:56:06","date_gmt":"2026-07-27T20:56:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/?p=241405"},"modified":"2026-07-27T20:56:06","modified_gmt":"2026-07-27T20:56:06","slug":"doctors-are-now-advocating-for-death-by-organ-donation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/doctors-are-now-advocating-for-death-by-organ-donation\/","title":{"rendered":"Doctors are now advocating for death by organ donation"},"content":{"rendered":"

An article in the New England Journal of Medicine<\/em> argues that the ethical focus in organ donation should shift away from the moment of death towards \u201crespecting<\/em>\u201d the patients’ decision to be killed for organ removal.<\/p>\n

In other words, the article<\/a> from July 8th in the New England Journal of Medicine<\/em> proposes the direct killing of people through organ donation.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

In the article Contextualizing the Dead Donor Rule in an Era of Voluntary Euthanasia<\/em>, Dr. Robert Truog and his colleagues explain that \u2013 since we have already redefined death for our current system of organ removal \u2013 allowing explicit death through organ donation is simply the next logical step.<\/p>\n

The authors’ argument addresses the \u201cdead donor rule<\/em>\u201d (DDR), an ethical principle stating that patients must be deceased before organ donation and that medical personnel should not cause death through organ removal. This rule is intended to maintain public trust in our organ donation system.<\/p>\n

But according to Truog and his colleagues, the \u201cdead donor rule<\/em>\u201d has already become flexible:<\/p>\n

\u201cAlthough the DDR is considered the \u2018ethical linchpin\u2019 of transplantation medicine, it functions less as a moral absolute and more as a moral anchor whose application requires continuous interpretation and adaptation.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

The authors cite the example of \u201cbrain death<\/em>\u201d and explain that while brain death is not an actual biological death, it serves as an example of how we can adapt the definition of death to modern needs:<\/p>\n

\u201cDespite philosophical and biological uncertainties, brain death was incorporated into legislation and medical practice with the enactment of the Uniform Determination of Death Act in 1981, which defined death as the irreversible cessation of all brain functions. However, accumulating clinical experience revealed inconsistencies in this integrative concept of brain death. <\/em><\/p>\n

Dr. Allan Shewmon reported numerous cases of continued biological survival following the determination of brain death. These patients were able to grow, absorb nutrients and eliminate waste products, recover from infections and wounds, and even carry a foetus to term. Amid this uncertainty, organ donation continued, revealing a deeper conceptual shift. <\/em><\/p>\n

The DDR shifted the determination of death away from purely biological criteria toward adherence to diagnostic criteria enumerated and confirmed by a definitional authority. The \u2018death requirement\u2019 and trust in the organ donation system were not violated when the new concept of death was accepted within social and legal norms. Such contextualization made the DDR a flexible moral safeguard that maintained the obligation not to remove organs from living people, even when the meaning of \u2018death\u2019 itself was redefined<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

When you registered as an organ donor, were you told that the very definition of death had been redefined? Most people who register as organ donors believe they will be cold, grey, and stiff when they donate their organs, but that is never the case. Without blood circulation, organs very quickly become unsuitable for transplantation: corpses cannot donate viable organs. Therefore, people in a deep coma (with a beating heart) have been redefined as \u201cbrain dead<\/em>,\u201d meaning that the authorities responsible for the definition deemed them \u201cdead enough<\/em>\u201d to become organ donors.<\/p>\n

The article in the New England Journal of Medicine<\/em> also addresses the fact that organ donors after cardiac arrest (DCD) also do not meet the legal criteria for death in the USA, which require an irreversible loss of circulatory and respiratory functions.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe debate continues as to whether delayed-release (DCD) procedures are truly consistent with the concept of death (DDR), particularly since permanence is not necessarily synonymous with irreversibility. In DCD, death does not occur because resuscitation is impossible, but because it is intentionally withheld \u2013 in accordance with the patient’s values \u2013 thus guiding the patient toward death on a path considered \u2018irreversible\u2019 because it cannot be reversed. <\/em><\/p>\n

This shift from a biological to a procedural understanding of death recontextualized the DDR, aligning it more with general social and ethical notions than with empirical finality. \u2026\u2026. Here, too, the DDR does not persist as an immutable boundary, but as a moral framework whose ethical force is maintained through contextualization<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Were you informed about this shift from a biological to a procedural definition of death when you registered as an organ donor? That while your death wouldn’t meet the legal standards of the Uniform Determination of Death Act<\/em>, you would be considered \u201cdead enough<\/em>\u201d to become an organ donor through \u201ccontextualization<\/em>\u201d?<\/p>\n

The authors of the article also point out that organ donors all die anyway, so the exact time of death is irrelevant:<\/p>\n

\u201cIn cases of death resulting from organ donation, the patient’s consent, experience, and outcome are not affected by whether death occurs shortly before or during organ removal<\/strong>. The ethical focus should therefore shift away from determining a precise moment of biological death and towards respecting patients’ autonomous decisions, while ensuring robust safeguards against coercion and exploitation and advocating for a transparent and publicly accountable process<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Transparency? Currently, organ donors receive absolutely no information about how their death is determined before organ donation. No organ donor ever receives the information that any reasonable person would want to know in order to give informed consent. Do we really believe that this process will be transparent and publicly verifiable in the future?<\/p>\n

Dr. Truog and his colleagues argue that the way we are already redefining death in the context of organ donation justifies their idea of going a step further and allowing direct killing for the purpose of organ removal: \u201cEven if death by organ donation<\/strong> may be seen as a departure from the DDR\u2026\u2026. we interpret it as being in line with a historical pattern of recontextualization<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since we have gotten away with redefining living people in the past so that they are considered dead and can therefore become organ donors, we can apparently now openly call for euthanasia through organ removal. This process is also referred to as a \u201cslippery slope<\/em>\u201d.<\/p>\n

Instead of continuing to justify these ever-broadening definitions of death in the interest of organ donation, we need to return to recognizing death as a biological reality. And we should find new, ethical solutions for people with organ failure that do not involve intentionally killing unsuspecting human beings.<\/p>\n

Author: Heidi Klessig, Medical Doctor <\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

yogaesoteric
\nJuly 27, 2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An article in the New England Journal of Medicine argues that the ethical focus in organ donation should shift away from the moment of death towards \u201crespecting\u201d the patients’ decision to be killed for organ removal. In other words, the article from July 8th in the New England Journal of Medicine proposes the direct killing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[977],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-241405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-masonic-tendencies-in-contemporary-society-3480-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241405"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241405\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":241409,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241405\/revisions\/241409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}