I hate going to the hospital, but unfortunately, I've had to make the hospital my "second home" out of the necessity of treating some ailments due to my military service.
For the most part, I was treated well and the protocols did what they were supposed to do.
But going to the ER -- as I've had to do recently -- is not a pleasant thing, taking a toll on me physically and psychologically, not to mention the angst it causes my dear wife, Kathy...
It can be pretty scary for anyone having a long hospital stay for any serious physical trauma not knowing what the eventual outcome will be. That too, can play very heavily on the mind.
Being a practicing Catholic, though I fall short in many areas of my spiritual life, I offer up the challenges that I have to live with now on a daily basis. This is all part of growing older -- and hopefully -- wiser!
I do hope I make it to 80 (I just turned 79) that is, if that is what God wants for me... I hope I still have some things to accomplish on this earth, but time will tell...
Don't get me wrong, I'm really not complaining, especially when I see other veterans and civilian folks a lot worse off. I often say a prayer for them or include them in our evening Rosary.
If I may relate one instance that occurred while I was in the ER in the Kansas City, Missouri, VA hospital a few years back...
There was a fellow veteran placed in the same cubicle -- separated only by a curtain between us. This vet was wheeled in by his daughter -- he was in very bad shape. I could almost see the concern on her face... I had no choice but to hear what they were saying to each other, and how they loved each other, not only in words, but by the concern and her actions toward her dad.
Right then and there I decided to say the magnificent Hail Mary for my fellow brother vet...
As the daughter left the room to get something, as she passed, I quickly said that I was also a Vietnam vet, and that I will pray for your dad. She was taken aback -- in a good way -- and thanked me very much.
I'm not bragging here, but it is good to know that others do appreciate a good thought or, better still, a prayer -- a spiritual work of mercy -- that shows kindness and charity toward their loved ones, especially at the time of great physical, mental and spiritual need.
I don't know what the outcome for that Vietnam vet was, but I hope he made it out of there and was able to get back home with his loving daughter and be reunited with other family members as well.
*****
Now the article from lifesitenews.com and written by Heidi Klessig, M.D.
"(LifeSiteNews) — A July 8 New England Journal of Medicine article proposes the direct killing of people via organ donation.
In the article “Contextualizing the Dead Donor Rule in an Era of Voluntary Euthanasia,” Dr. Robert Truog and colleagues say that since we’ve already redefined death for our current system of organ harvesting, allowing explicit death via donation is just the next logical step.
The authors’ argument deals with the Dead Donor Rule (DDR), an ethical standard that says patients must be dead before organ procurement and that clinicians must not cause death by organ retrieval. This rule is supposed to maintain the public’s trust in our organ donation system.
But, according to Truog and colleagues, the dead donor rule has already become stretchy:
Though the DDR is considered the “ethical linchpin” of transplantation, it has thus functioned less as a moral absolute than as a moral anchor, whose application requires ongoing interpretation and adaptation.
The authors cite the example of “brain death,” saying that brain death isn’t actual biological death, but serves as an example of how we can change the definition of death to suit our needs:
Despite philosophical and biologic uncertainty, brain death was adopted into law and medical practice with the 1981 enactment of the Uniform Determination of Death Act, which defined death as the irreversible cessation of all brain functions. Accumulating clinical experience, however, exposed inconsistencies in this integrative concept of brain death. [Dr. Allan] Shewmon reported many cases of prolonged biologic survival after the determination of brain death. These patients were able to grow, assimilate nutrition and eliminate waste, recover from infections and wounds, even gestate a fetus. Amid uncertainty, organ donation continued, revealing a deeper conceptual pivot. The DDR shifted the determination of death away from strictly biologic criteria toward adherence to diagnostic criteria that were enumerated and endorsed by a definitional authority. The Death Requirement and trust in the organ-donation system were not violated if the new concept of death was accepted in social and legal standards. Such contextualization rendered the DDR a flexible moral safeguard, upholding the commitment not to take organs from living people even as the meaning of “death” itself was revised.
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When you signed up to be an organ donor, did they tell you that the meaning of death itself had been revised? Most people registering as organ donors believe that they will be cold, gray, and stiff when they donate their organs, but this is never the case. Organs very quickly become unsuitable for transplantation in the absence of circulation: corpses cannot donate viable organs. So, people in a deep coma (with beating hearts) were redefined as being “brain dead,” meaning that the definitional authorities deemed them to be “dead enough” to become organ donors.
The New England Journal of Medicine article also discusses the fact that Donation after Circulatory Death (DCD) organ donors also don’t actually meet the U.S. legal criteria for death, which require an irreversible loss of circulatory and respiratory function:
Debate persists over whether DCD practices truly uphold the DDR, particularly in that permanence is not necessarily equivalent to irreversibility. In DCD, death occurs not because resuscitation is impossible, but because it is intentionally withheld, in accordance with patient values, placing patients on a trajectory toward death, which is considered “irreversible” because it will not be reversed. This shift from a biologic to a procedural conception of death again contextualized the DDR, aligning it with general social and ethical understandings rather than empirical finality.… Again, the DDR persists not as an immutable boundary but as a moral framework whose ethical force is maintained by contextualization.
When you registered as an organ donor, were you told of this shift from a biological to a procedural conception of death? That your death would not actually meet the Uniform Determination of Death Act’s legal standard but that you would be considered to be “dead enough” to become an organ donor via “contextualization”?
The article’s authors also say that organ donors all end up dead anyway, so the precise moment of death doesn’t really matter:
In death by organ donation, the patient’s authorization, experience, and outcome are not altered by whether death occurs moments before or during organ retrieval. Ethical focus should therefore shift away from identifying a precise moment of biologic death and toward respecting patients’ autonomous decisions, ensuring that safeguards against coercion and exploitation are robust, and advocating for a transparent and publicly accountable process.
Transparency? Currently, organ donors receive absolutely no transparency about how their deaths will be determined prior to organ donation. No organ donor is ever given the information that any reasonable person would want to know in order to give fully informed consent. Do we really think the process will be transparent and publicly accountable going forward?
Dr. Truog and colleagues say that the ways we are already redefining death for organ donation justify their idea of plunging ahead and allowing direct killing via organ harvesting: “Although death by organ donation may be viewed as a departure from the DDR … we interpret it as consistent with a historical pattern of recontextualization.”
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So, because historically we have gotten away with redefining living people as being dead enough to become organ donors, apparently we can now openly call for euthanasia via organ harvesting. This process is also known as the slippery slope.
Rather than continuing to justify these ever-expanding definitions of death for the sake of organ donation, we need to return to recognizing death as a biological reality. And we need to find new, ethical solutions for people with organ failure that don’t involve killing."
Heidi Klessig, M.D., is a retired anesthesiologist and pain management specialist who writes and speaks on the ethics of organ harvesting and transplantation. She is the author of The Brain Death Fallacy and her work may be found at respectforhumanlife.com.
End of very disturbing article...
Pray that these doctors come to recognize the Natural Law and the precious gift of life of our good and loving God and Creator has given to us...
Pray too for strength and honor!
Viva Cristo Rey! Bl. Fr. Miguel Pro, Fr. Emil Kapaun and Fr. Vincent Capodanno, pray for us...
St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle...
St. Joseph, pray for us!!
Gene DeLalla
