Tag Archives: Organ Donation

An Act of Charity?

March 6, 2021Abortion, Bioethics, ScienceAppropriation, Bury the Dead, Covid19, Organ Donation, Organ Harvesting, Principle of Cooperation, Vaccinestwowingstogod@gmail.com

In the last post, it was discussed that an evolutionary paradigm, motivated by a spirit of transhumanism that was at the heart of the development of the new delivery methods for so-called vaccines. It was also mentioned in passing how much of the debate so far as centered upon the question of the use of aborted fetal tissues in both the testing (Moderna and Pfizer) and delivery (AstraZeneca and Johnson and Johnson). Despite this connection to abortion, there are many in the Church that have reasoned that it is morally licit and perhaps even laudatory to receive the vaccine. In this post, we will discuss why it is neither and we should avoid these and all abortion tainted vaccines.

As usual, the devil is in the details—except this time, the Devil really is in the details. The four current vaccines all make use of fetal cell lines originating in an aborted child. Moderna, Pfizer, and AstraZeneca all used cells derived from the HEK293 cell line while the Johnson and Johnson used cells from the PER-C6 line. These came from different children; the former came from the kidney (HEK=Human Embryonic Kidney, one can imagine that it was not the only sample since it has the number 293,even if it is the most “fruitful” of the collection) of a child in 1973 and the latter from the retina of a child in 1985. The degree to which each of these vaccines is tainted by the evil of abortion is certainly different. Although whether this is morally relevant or not is open to discussion. Before getting to that however, it is good to ponder just what we mean when we say it is tainted by abortion.

The Devil Is in the Details

Most of us would have difficulty imagining how these cell lines are gathered. Perhaps we might think that a bunch of abortions are performed and they have a bunch of tissue left over that they then sell to harvesters and researchers. Or maybe we think that the harvester went door to door at abortion mills and ask if they had any extra tissue around. In truth however the harvester must have arranged a priori, presumably through informed consent of the mother, to gather the cells from the child at the time of the abortion. Like regular organ donation, fetal organ donation must be fresh in the sense that the live tissue would be preserved right as the abortion is happening. It might also be that the child is removed along with the womb and kept alive until the harvesting could occur at some secondary site. The point is that the developer wasn’t just some opportunist, but absolutely complicit in the abortion. He arranges with both the abortionist and the mother beforehand and does nothing to stop it at the time. Presumably, there is compensation both to the abortionist and the mother, meaning that he has actually encouraged it.

But it isn’t just the abortion that is the problem now. The developer of the line commits a further evil when he keeps the child alive and harvests his or her organs. Let that settle in—a child is removed from (or with) his mother’s womb, possibility refrigerated and then, while still living, has his organs removed. This is the stuff of Mengele’s dreams. The evils now begin to multiply. The researcher, because he demands the cell lines for testing, may or may not be cooperating with the abortion, is most certainly cooperating and complicit in organ harvesting. So while we might be able to say there is a moral difference between simply using the cell line for testing versus using it for delivery, it is not a difference in degree but in number. Any researcher that uses the cell line formally cooperates in the organ harvesting.

In order to avoid the reductio ad Hitlerum accusation, it is important to discuss the reference to Josef Mengele. Regardless of the usefulness of the results and the data, everyone agrees that to use data from any of his experiments is unethical. This is because the way in which these experiments were conducted was so evil that conscience forbids the use of the results. Certainly a Catholic conscience should shudder at having anything to do with abortion and organ harvesting tainted vaccines, regardless to what degree a given Pharmaceutical Company used them. Some actions such as harvesting organs from innocent, living pre-born children is so evil that there is no good that would justify using them. As the former abortionist Bernard Nathanson said, “it is impossible to separate the issue of abortion from the use of the tissue obtained therefrom.”

Appropriation vs Cooperation

This is why framing the use of these vaccines only in terms of cooperation is incomplete at best. Cooperation with some act in the past is almost always remote. Appropriation, that is, whether we can reap the fruits of someone else’s past evil act in the present is another question. We might not cooperate to the evil of abortion and organ harvesting, but that does not automatically mean we are free to benefit from it. For example, suppose I buy a bike that I later find out was stolen. I am obligated to return that bike to its rightful owner, regardless of whether I actually cooperated with its theft and regardless of how desperately I need the bike.

The theft of the bike is illustrative because in a very real way the organs have been stolen from these children. Once we become aware of that fact, we must make restitution by returning them to their rightful owner, God by providing them with a proper burial. This is why it is always an act of charity to bury a person. When these aborted children were murdered, in justice they must be buried and as long as they remain unburied, the evil is ongoing. While we may not have the means to gather up all the remains from this child, we most certainly have no right to benefit from their murder and dismemberment.

This is why the two vaccines, Johnson and Johnson and AstraZeneca, that deliver the vaccine through cultures grown in the cell line (that will contain a part of the child’s body, namely their DNA) must be avoided. There is no question as to whether if there is a grave enough cause or not. It is a clear violation of justice. The other two vaccines currently on the market, might be justified for an extremely grave reason. I say might because it is hard to imagine that given the evil that has been done to the unborn persons anyone would in good conscience be willing to do so.

What is clear is that receiving any of these vaccines can not be reduced to an act of charity nor as an obligation to the common good. Charity is a love of God and love of neighbor for His sake. It cannot be an act of charity to compromise with evil or reap the fruits of a gravely evil action. Furthermore, the common good must work for the good of every member of a society. For the vaccines to truly be instruments of the Common Good, then the goods attached to them must flow back over even the unborn members of society. Clearly, these vaccines are prejudiced against some of the unborn.

In closing it is worth mentioning that the Church’s teaching that focuses on the principle of cooperation has truly backfired. There are many cases in which a child (or an adult with the COVID vaccines) receives a “a vaccine which was developed using cell lines of illicit origin” when there is no serious “danger to health.” Not surprisingly the “the duty to make known their disagreement and to ask that their healthcare system make other types of vaccines available” (c.f. Donum Vitae, 8) has fallen upon deaf ears. We are currently 0 for 4 on the COVID vaccines and there is no reason to think that will change. Perhaps if, and this would need to happen from the top, Catholics en masse refused the Covid vaccines, then we wouldn’t be in this moral quandary.

The Principle of Totality

July 20, 2019Abortion, Bioethics, Catholic Social Teaching, Conscience, Contraception, Culture of LifeAmputation, Organ Donation, Principle of Bodily Integritytwowingstogod@gmail.com

During the 1920s, the practice of compulsory sterilization in the United States became commonplace. The Supreme Court even went so far as declaring the constitutionality of the sterilization laws in the 1927 decision in the case of Buck v. Bell. In the majority brief written by Oliver Wendell Holmes, the Court argued in favor of this practice by saying that “(It) is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes…Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” The Church for her part vehemently opposed the practice by appealing to the principle of totality. Because this principle is often cited in support of Catholic Moral teaching related to medical ethics it is instructive to examine it in some detail.

In its simplest form, the principle of totality holds that that under certain circumstances it is morally permissible to sacrifice the good of a part for the sake of the whole. However, this needs further qualification in order to see why something like the Eugenics program of the 1920s was morally wrong. Justice Holmes in his argument thought that for the sake of the whole of society, it would be better to sterilize some of the members.

Clearing Up Confusion

In a speech given to the “Leaders and Members of the Italian Association of Cornea Donors and Italian Association for the Blind,” Pope Pius XII hoped to clear up some of the confusion related to this principle. There were those who argued that the principle of totality justified the removal of vital organs from the dying in order to transplant them into the bodies of those who had a better chance of survival. While he lauds the intention to alleviate suffering he rejects this argument as erroneous by appealing to the “essential difference between a physical organism and a moral organism.” The organs of the body exist solely for the sake of the body while each human person does not exist for the sake of the whole of humanity. Instead each human person has intrinsic worth and thus cannot be coercively sacrificed for the sake of the whole (Pope Pius XII, “Speech to Leaders and Members of the Italian Association of Cornea Donors and Italian Association for the Blind”).

We see then just how important the distinction between a physical organism and a moral organism is in determining the application of this principle. A physical organism is one in which there is a unity on the level of essence. Thus, the relationship of part to whole exists if the part by its very nature has no finality outside the whole. A moral organism however is a group of individuals that are bound together in some unity of action. Each member of the group has a value that is intrinsically bound up with what (or more accurately who) they are rather than what they contribute to the community.

In this way then the Principle of Totality serves a limiting function on medical practice. For the sake of a physical whole, one may sacrifice a part of oneself assuming that the choice does not do harm to an authentic human good. However, if there is a moral unity then there is a limit on the activities of the individual at the service of the community.

It is also important to mention the fact that despite the fact that it applies to a physical organism, the principle is not merely physicalist in nature. It is meant to serve the integral good of the person by creating a harmonious relationship between the physical and spiritual elements. To emphasize this point some authors have referred to it as the principle of “Totality and Integrity.” Fr. Benedict Ashley, one such author, states the principle as follows: “Except to save life itself, the fundamental functional capacities which constitute the human person should not be destroyed, but preserved, developed, and used for the good of the whole person and of the community.”

An Example

If we examine one of the most common procedures that involve the principle of totality, organ donation and transplantation, we can further illuminate this principle and its use in medical ethics. In applying this principle, we are able to find justification for organ donation and transplantation. Provided that the functional integrity of the donor is maintained then living organ donation is morally justifiable. Ashley et al present four related principles that show how the principle of totality might be maintained. There should be a serious need faced by the patient, which can only be satisfied by organ donation. Although it might reduce “anatomical integrity” it should not diminish the “functional integrity” of the person. Thirdly the risk of donation should be viewed as “an act of charity proportionate to the good resulting for the recipient.” Finally there should be “free and informed consent” by the donor.

Many try to justify freely consented sterilization by appealing to the principle of totality. They argue that if a marriage is in general open to children then each act of sexual intercourse need not be. They argue that if the marriage would be harmed in some way by having children, the good of procreation may be sacrificed for the total good of the marriage itself.

The problem with this argument is that it violates the principle that one may never perform an intrinsically evil act (such as contraception) so that good may come about. However, there is a flaw in the logic as well. As was mentioned, the principle of totality actually applies to physical organisms (like organs) and not moral organisms (i.e. persons). The conjugal act has an intrinsic value in itself and it is not just as part of the whole that it gains its value (Pius XII, “Speech to the Twenty-Sixth Congress of the Italian Association of Urology”)..

The problem with appealing to the principle of totality in this manner is that it can lead to justifying nearly anything. For example, there is no reason why an act of infidelity, especially if it might “help” the marriage, would be wrong as long as the totality of the marriage is faithful.

In conclusion, the principle of totality is an important principle in medical ethics because it promotes authentic human good. This may require at times the sacrifice of a physical part for the integral good of the person, but it also serves to limit the activities that may be performed on a person.

Knowing when Your Time is Up

May 1, 2019Anthropology, Bioethics, Heaven, Last ThingsClinical Death, Miracles, Near Death Experience, Neurological Criteria, Organ Donation, Princess Bridetwowingstogod@gmail.com

In a study that confirms what fans of The Princess Bride have long known, researcher Dr. Sam Parnia found that those whose hearts stopped and were clinically dead were only “mostly dead”. He found that nearly 40% of patients who were revived after their hearts had stopped beating reported some level of awareness and consciousness. The doctor even went so far as to say that “you know you are dead because your brain keeps working” for some short period of time. Since the results of this study, which he dubbed AWARE, were published in 2015, there have been a slew of studies attempting to better understand death and so-called near death experiences. Unfortunately, a number of these studies ignore what we already know through philosophical anthropology and so end up taking researchers down into bottomless rabbit holes.

With the advent of the age of the “specialist” these types of studies, that is, studies that apply empirical science to questions philosophy can, and usually already has, provide an answer are becoming more common. Very often science, because it relies only upon empirical methods, comes up with incorrect conclusions. We already know, and have known for a long time, that you know when you are dead. This is because the soul is immortal.

Philosophy as the Handmaiden of Science

Some might think this is a theological claim and dismiss the question a priori has something that must be “believed” and not known. While the question of the soul’s destiny might be a theological claim, the fact that it is immortal is a philosophical truth. Human beings are capable of three types of actions. There are those that depend solely upon the body like digestion. There are those that depend upon the interaction of the body and the mind like choosing what to eat based upon both knowledge of nutrition and personal tastes. Finally, there are those actions that do not depend upon the body like abstract thought in some intellectual field like mathematics or even reasoning about the immortality of the soul. This latter group, because it does not depend upon the body as a completely immaterial operation, means that man has the capacity, at least in part, to act when the soul is separated from the body. We may use the body (such as our memory and imagination) when we perform these abstract operations, but these operations do not depend upon the body.

We may not be able to definitively say how we know after the soul has been separated from the body, but we can say with certainty that we continue to know things even after our brains cease operating. This, because it goes outside of ordinary human experience, would have to be revealed in some way to us. The point though is that it is not unreasonable to posit that one of those things that we know is that we are dead.

If philosophy already confirms this when it proves the immortality of the soul, then what value do studies like this have? Death, properly defined, is the separation of body and soul. Because the soul is an immaterial substance, its presence cannot be directly detected using scientific (materialistic) methods. Instead medical personnel must look for signs that the soul has, in fact, left the body. To see how this might be done, we again must turn to philosophy.

What do we mean when we say the soul is “in the body”? To say that a spiritual substance is in a material substance is to say that it is acting upon it. So, it is said that the soul is in the body, it does not mean that it is stored in some area of the body, but that it acts upon it. The soul does not act on every part of the body directly, but instead acts through the brain which serves as the body’s integrative organ. Once the brain is no longer able to perform this integrative task, then the soul leaves the body. This is the reason that the Church suggests what is called the Neurological Criteria for determining death.

Science as the Handmaiden of Philosophy

This study and studies like it seem to empirically verify what we have long known through reason—even if the heart stops beating, this does not mean a person is dead (i.e. the soul has left the body). Studies like this should also make us pause on questions of organ donation since many people use clinical death as a criteria to determine whether to harvest a person’s organs. The person, using the Neurological Criterion, may still actually be alive and even capable of higher brain activity associated with human thought. In so far as these studies help to refine and better pinpoint the moment of death, they are very helpful. But when they get off on tangents such as “you know you are dead” they undermine the task of true science. They seem to adopt a materialistic conception of man, without the strings that are attached. If you are “dead” and your body is all you are, then who is the I that is knowing he is dead? To even make the statement implicitly assumes there is someone who survives death.

When framed in this way these studies also feed the universal fascination with near-death experiences. As this particular study showed, these experiences are relatively common place. There is no reason why we should be skeptical of these accounts in general, especially when as Christians we have examples, including Lazarus, of people who have definitely died and are resuscitated. But there are reasons why we might be skeptical in particular instances. Few, if any, of these people describe the presence of the demonic or mention the epic struggle with fallen angels that we know happens in the dying. To say that all of these people have avoided the same epic struggle that Our Lord instructed us to pray against in the Our Father, stretches the Christian imagination. In fact, it stretches it thin enough to say that it is probably not common place at all. It is more likely that most of these are either illusory or demonically caused.

Two Wings to God

"Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth"Pope St. John Paul II