« Death by organ donation »: when euthanasia becomes a harvest

In Canada, physicians propose to put to death, by the very removal of their organs, those who have requested euthanasia. It means abandoning the rule that forbade taking the vital organs before death: henceforth the extraction itself would cause the death. This is called « death by organ donation ».

The law of God admits no exception here: « Thou shalt not kill. » This commandment binds the compassionate hand as much as the hateful one, and the victim's consent changes nothing, for no man owns his life so far as to hand it over to the knife. Tradition adds a rule that nothing repeals: one may never do evil that good may come of it; of those who dare it, Scripture says: « Whose damnation is just. » The innocent may not be directly killed, for any end whatever — not even to save other lives.

Measured against this rule, the proposal is only the logical terminus of euthanasia: once life is declared available, it becomes a resource, and the dying man a harvest. We name the act: to open a living man and take his heart is homicide, even though he consent and even though others should live by it. The physician who kills ceases to be a physician; he becomes the executioner of a charity that has lost its head. We do not measure a man's worth by what he yields once dead.

Sources. Exodus, XX, 13, on the fifth commandment; Epistle to the Romans, III, 8; Catechism of the Council of Trent (1566), on the fifth commandment, concerning the killing of the innocent.