The Daily Mail 5/9/16 reports on a paper published in a medical journal which calls for allowing euthanasia to enable organ donation in the case ‘where it has been argued through the courts that a patient in a permanent vegetative state is going to have clinically assisted nutrition and hydration withdrawn, with the inevitable consequence of death, and causing dessication of the organs such that they are no longer able to be donated.’
This is actually a very narrow condition, however, it raises alarm bells for some people, perhaps because they fear that the principle might be easily extended. The involvement of a court decision is paramount. The court would have a much easier decision to make if the patient had previously completed both an organ donor card, and an Advance Decision – in particular one which requests assisted dying in hopeless circumstances such as this. MDMD strongly recommend everyone to complete an Advance Decision.
