….On New Year’s Day 1968, in apartheid South Africa, a 24-year-old black man named Clive Haupt was at a picnic with his family near the sea when he developed a subarachnoid hemorrhage (bleeding around his brain). He was taken to Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town and was admitted under the care of the physician Raymond Hoffenberg.
That night, Hoffenberg received a visit from the transplant team and was asked to pronounce Haupt dead. Hoffenberg, troubled at the thought of declaring someone with a beating heart dead, refused. One of the surgeons on the transplant team said to Hoffenberg: “God, Bill, what sort of heart are you going to give us?” In other words, were Haupt to actually die (using circulatory-respiratory criteria), his heart would quickly begin to decompose and would no longer be suitable for transplantation.
The following morning, under considerable pressure, Hoffenberg declared Haupt dead. Surgeon Christiaan Barnard subsequently harvested Haupt’s heart and transplanted it into a 58-year-old retired white dentist, marking the first “successful” heart transplant….
In 2008, Pope Benedict XVI gave an “Address to Participants at an International Congress organized by the Pontifical Academy for Life,” the Congress being called to study organ transplantation. Some observers expected him to reaffirm the cautious endorsement of a brain-based criterion given by John Paul II in 2000. Instead, Pope Benedict XVI did not even mention it, saying starkly that “individual vital organs cannot be extracted except ex cadavere [from a cadaver]”. Anyone who has ever seen a “brain-dead” patient in an intensive care unit knows that is not what is normally considered a “cadaver….”
Our reflection on the end of life also has important implications for the beginning of life. If we accept the statement: “A functioning brain is the material condition for the soul to inform a human body,” then we must logically conclude that personal human life cannot begin at the moment of conception, for the single-celled zygote has no brain. This seems inconsistent with the Church’s Instruction on Respect for Human Life, issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1987, which rhetorically asks, “How could a human individual not be a human person?”
….The goal of organ transplantation is to save lives. However, we cannot save lives at the expense of other lives – including those of sick, dying, or severely disabled people. In this article, we are able to only briefly touch on information pertinent to the topic of “brain death.” Although our discussion is not exhaustive, the historical background, the empirical medical evidence, and our anthropological and theological reflections raise the serious concern that “brain-dead” patients are, in fact, alive….
The above comes from an April 22 article in Catholic World Report by Bishop Joseph Strickland, Joseph Eble, MD.
Our president is brain-dead yet alive and governing.
No organ donor sticker on my drivers license, don’t want to be killed in hospital because someone needs my heart more than I do.
I would not hesitate to pray for someone else in need of a transplant, or to view an organ donor as heroic, for saving someone’s life, while losing their own. However, I am not comfortable with the idea of receiving an organ transplant for myself, I prefer to be content just to live and to die as God made me, not indulge in over-extensive scientific procedures. I have never agreed to be an organ donor, but may someday change my mind.
So just disconnect the ventilator and other life-support systems from the brain-dead person and the artificially alive person will soon die, at which point you can remove its organs for transplantation. When someone is brain-dead, there’s no hope for resumption of normal brain activity, which means no hope for life without artificial, extraordinary means to keep it alive. The Church does not require anyone to use extraordinary means to preserve life. This isn’t that difficult, people.
Except the minute one actually dies the body tissue starts to rot and cannot be used for transplanting. That is why the parts are taken while the person is still alive and just “brain dead”. Did you not read the second paragraph of the article?
By the way, there have been cases where doctors thought their patients was “brain dead”, but the people recovered just before they were going to be used for transplants and later fully recovered. Very scary!
Are ancephalic children “alive” according to the “brain-dead” criterion?
Um, at best Strickland gave his opinion, not the truth.
Why is the man in the first sentence identified as black? How is that relevant? You know if the man had been a suspect in a crime, where identifying the suspect would be relevant, racial identifying characteristics such as that would have been omitted from the story.
Because it is reporting the facts, just as the aborted fetal cell line used in some vaccines were reported as being from two white babies, one boy and one girl. And the races of suspected criminals do eventually come out to the public even though some news sources might try to avoid mentioning it.
Please excuse my typos in verb choices in my last two posts as my eyes were very tired when posting.
Maybe because in apartheid South Africa in the 1960’s, his heart would not have been removed so quickly if he were White?
And, at that time in South Africa, things were pretty much Black and White, literally.
Would they have been as quick to remove a heart from a White to transplant into a Black?
Remember, a lot of progress in race relations and racial justice has been made, around the world, in the past 50+ years.
Yet, I agree that, at this time, it seems irrelevant.
Haupt was coloured not black.
Haupt’s mother gave permission for his heart to be removed.
Thousands attended Haupt’s Anglican funeral – coloured, black, white, asian, with 600 inside his church including Dr. Barnard and members of his surgical team, the recipient’s wife, and white politicians. It was in some sense a cause for celebration as well as mourning.
The donor was not black but coloured (S.A.’s mixed race category) as indicated by his name, Clive Haupt, and picture. Silly virtue signaling on Strickland’s part. Hoffenberg’s 2001 article from which Strickland draws and links to does not even mention the donor’s race:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1121917/
Moreover, the first transplant (Dec 1967) had a woman donor who was white. Hoffenberg says great care was taken to select a white donor for the first operation to avert criticism of a black person’s heart being given to a white recipient, and that the hospital treated patients of any race.
This whole transplant business has become a freaking nightmare. The only transplants I believe in are the ones where no one has to die to give his/her body part, and the giver is fully informed of the risks and give their full informed permission without undue pressure. If siblings want to give one of their kidneys or skin, that can grow back, for a skin graft, etc. to a compatible relative in need — fine. They do not have to die to do that, but they should be informed of all the risks.
gives new meaning
to the phrase:
“You CAN’T handle the TRUTH!”
(profound thanks to B XVI)
Um that was Jack Nicholson’s character in A Few Good Men who said that line. Not Pope Bonodict.
The problem with “brain death” is that we are notable to reliably determine when someone is, truly, “brain dead.” Brain death, as far as the Magisterium and all orthodox moral theologians are concerned, means that the entire brain is dead. This means that there can not be even a trace of electical activity anywhere in the brain, including the brain stem. This means that, in order to preserve the heartbeat and respiration necessary to preserve the organs in the donor’s body, machines would have to do all of the work. This can only go on for a couple of days, at most. The fact that there have been people who were declared “brain dead” who have been kept on life support for weeks, or even months, says that they were not, truly, “brain dead.” The fact that there have been people who were declared dead for lack of neurological activity who have “come back to life” testifies to the unreliability of the criteria for declaring deathin this way. The theory behind “brain death” is not necessarily bad, but, “medical science” has not yet developed the ability to determine it to a moral certainty.
Strickland undermines his case by needlessly, deceitfully, and ineptly tossing race and apartheid into the mix where none existed. Hoffenberg refutes the racial angle in his 2001 article from which Strickland draws his story and never mentions the race of the coloured (mixed race) donor.
Strickland subtlely downplays the condition of the second transplant donor by leaving out the word “severe.”
He implies that Hoffenberg caved under pressure. Not so. The doctor repeatedly refused until a day later when he could no longer elicit neurological reflexes from his patient.
He leads you to think that this was the world’s first transplant. It was Dr Barnard’s second.
The world’s first transplant had a white donor (and white recipient), deliberately so per Hoffenberg.
The article is grossly mistitled.
Truth would be better served had Cal-Catholic printed Hoffenberg’s 2001 article in place of Strickland’s disinformation.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1121917/
Yeah, Strickland is not someone I admire
“ex cadavere”
You just said the Magic Word!
Groucho Marx
As a retired Critical Care Nurse, I have seen several “brain dead” patients wake up. I have also witnessed anxious transplant teams hovering around, waiting for “fresh” organs.
On another note to CCD administration. I cannot up or down vote on make comments on my iPhone — only on iPad or iMac. Can you help me in fixing this?