Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Bring Out Your Dead

The cry "Bring Out Your Dead" echoed through the streets of Europe during the black plague. Slow moving carts would trundle through the streets to allow towns people to discard the bodies of those who had succumbed to the wiles of Yersinia Pestis.

Now, they're coming to your house to take your body parts. Even if you aren't dead...yet.

New York Organ Wagon <---click to read disturbing story

"A special team will monitor 9-1-1 calls about people in danger of dying and they will travel directly to a person's home without being summoned."

"The team — composed of two EMTs, an organ donor family services specialist and a Bellevue emergency physician — will interact with grieving and shocked family members in the limited time available before it is too late to use a person's organs."

I understand that many people are waiting for transplants, but is it morally and ethically right to hover around a dying person badgering their distraught families to, essentially, "give up the goods"?

How long until the medical lobby manages to make such donations "mandatory" given the huge profits transplants bring hospitals and transplant surgeons?

Is it just me, or is something very wrong here?

4 comments:

HermitJim said...

Pretty sick practice if you ask me!

Better not show up at my house!

Mayberry said...

My gizzards are not available for sheep implantation. One more reason why I want a Viking funeral...

Anonymous said...

I keep waiting to hear of someone winning their case in court to be able to sell either their own or next of kin's organs. Lots of 'slippery slopes' out there.

HossBoss said...

When my sister's husband died suddenly of a heart attack in 2006, the organ donor people were with us within minutes of my sister getting the awful news. He was a smoker and had a heart attack, so the only thing they really wanted was his skin (I didn't know they did that!?!) and his corneas. She agreed. She didn't ask my opinion and I wasn't going to second guess her decision. My brother-in-law died around midday. At 1:00am and again at 3:00am the next morning, those people were calling my sister's house asking questions. Her son would not wake her to put her on the phone. Yeoldfurt and I took off the next day to drive my sister to the funeral home to make arrangements. We were on our way to the funeral home before 9:00am and those people were calling her again. You know what earth-shaking information they wanted?? WHAT WERE THE SCARS ON HIS KNEES FROM? How is that relevant and why in the world could they not respect her privacy and grieving for at least 24 hours after her husband's death.

I know a lot of people are on organ donor lists for a long time and some don't live long enough to receive a transplant. But I wonder if we are not meddling too much out of our realm by 'parting out' human beings as if they were junk cars, no longer running. Just because we CAN do something does not mean we SHOULD.

As Hermit Jim said, they'd better not show up at MY door.