I have written before about my doubts and dislike of most human transplant techniques and proposals, these dislikes being based upon the apparent eagerness of medical people to ‘harvest’ or to slice organs off ‘donors’ while they are still technically alive. My unease was first established many years ago, when South Africa was still getting used to the news that Christiaan Barnard had performed the world’s heart transplant, and that the process actually worked. Following on from this ‘world’s first’ procedure, thousands more have followed, but to this writer, at least, the doubts remain.
I wrote of my own collision with the ‘Organ vultures’ which occurred many years back, when I stated:-
I have personally seen the medical vultures in operation, whilst in South Africa. I had transported the grieving parents of a child, gravely injured in an accident, to the hospital. There they were told, sympathetically enough, of their son’s condition and prognosis, which was fatal. But there was a second medic in the queue to speak with this couple, and all he was asking that the parents sign the various forms which he held on a clip-board. He was very persistent in his requests, but rather vague as to the ends built in to the forms. Being a very interested observer, and also being both hard-headed and willing to speak out, I took this young white-coated clown to one side, and asked, yes ‘asked’ would be a good word, what he wished of my friends. Very reluctantly, he showed me the forms, which of course were a series of consents for tissue and organ removal from their dying son.
I made him, and his Administrator, very aware what would happen if the mortal remains of my friends’ son were not released for burial as complete as possible, as they were in no state to give cogent thought to having their son’s body plundered in the name of medical excellence and study.To donate is good, if you are so inclined; anything else is theft!
Which is why I write again of the Transplant Industry, of the propositions and proposals now available to people desperate for an answer, a solution to a medical problem which maybe once was uniformly fatal, but that solution comes with its own unique invasion of another person’s right to choose whether to agree to be a donor or not. We read of a seven year-old boy who has contracted leukaemia, and of his THREE YEAR-OLDbrother who was ASKED by his parents to agree to be a bone-marrow donor to his brother. What sort of ghouls are treating this small boy; and more importantly; are the parents from the same planet as the rest of us. Imagine, they are placing a decision, whether to agree to be a part of a life-altering procedure for his brother, onto the mind of a THREE YEAR-OLD boy. Just imagine what his life would be like if this small boy had said “NO!”; and his brother had succumbed to this disease, the same disease which had killed my beloved sister some fifty-odd years ago?
Ghouls and vultures is what I termed them before, and my mind has not changed one iota!
Fire, Pillage & Plague 