For stories on healthy living, subscribe to NPR's health newsletter.Should surgeons be allowed to perform euthanasia by removing patients' hearts and other organs while they're still alive?The idea, dubbed "Death by Organ Donation," would enable euthanasia patients to donate organs for transplantation in a way that would make their organs more likely to be usable.It would also kill them."It would be an ethical thing to do because this is something the patients have chosen for themselves," says Dr.
Robert Truog, a physician and bioethicist at Harvard Medical School who co-authored a paper outlining Death by Organ Donation in the New England Journal of Medicine."They have very generously thought: 'How might my death help other people?' It's a very altruistic, generous thing to do.'"But the idea is controversial for a variety of reasons, including because it goes against fundamental principles that have guided organ donation for decades.
The Dead Donor Rule requires that patients must be dead before any organs are removed.Doctors also can't kill patients in the process of removing organs.The rule has long generated intense debate, including disputes over how to precisely determine when a person is dead, as well as the development of new ways to extend the lives of dying patients and recover usable organs for transplants.At the same time, many countries, including Canada, the Netherlands and Spain, have made it legal for doctors to help patients die through euthanasia."What if they chose to be organ donors? The problem is that under current standards doctors must not cause death in the process of procuring organs for transplant," Truog says.So hearts, lungs, livers and kidneys can only be removed from euthanasia patients after they have received a lethal dose of drugs, which makes their organs, especially their hearts, much less useful for transplantation."Why would it not be OK for patients to say, 'I've chosen to die by a lethal injection.
Isn't there some way I ca...