Organ Transplants, Brain Death, Some Nasty Thoughts (Revised)

Having read Vital Organ Transplantation - Not Truly Dead, by Paul A. Byrne, MD, and Fr. Peter Damien Fehlner, FI here, I am even less likely to bequeath my organs for transplant. Apparently people declared brain-dead have embarrassingly revived just as they were about to be cannibalised. So much for the omniscience of doctors and scientists.


I never much liked the idea of having no control over who would benefit from my post-mortem fleshly endowments. I would not wish to prolong the life of someone whose views I detest, or whose actions are a mortal danger to others. Let the so-and-so die.

Looking at the Four Last Things, I suppose that if my destination was Heaven, I might have some embarrassment in explaining to a fellow denizen that his or her beloved child was in the Other Place thanks to the actions or words of someone who, without my transplanted organs, would have been dead too early to have let them astray.

If I were in Hell, I would no doubt rejoice with the devils in the damnation of yet another soul. Horrible.

An interesting moral conundrum. Father Tracy, S.J. who received me into the Church, rather disapprovingly called such speculations Spanish Questions.

If I could specify the kind of beneficiary - ah! That would be another matter - faithful priests and religious, the poor, the homeless, the so-called underclass, children, my friends or family. But sadly no chance of that.

Nor am I much attracted by the idea of some medical know-all declaring me dead in order to enhance his c.v.

So, very sorry Dr Amby Shuss, Ms Medea Bashfoetus, Ms Mybody Mydecision, Professor Jim Hawker-Dawker, erika steinbach, Christians for Choice, Bishop Gongseeker, all you trouser-rolling Freemasons out there, and the Goodthinkful Millionaires Club, but you won't be getting my vodka-pickled kidneys or liver.

But I'd accept yours, and make better use of them than you ever did.

You can trust me on that.