Organ Donation and the Law of Unintended Consequences
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Recently, the Department of Health and Human Services announced a new rule, scheduled to go into effect on Nov. 18, that will change the organ donation process. According to HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy:
[W]e are holding failing organizations accountable, strengthening patient safeguards, and helping high-performing organizations reach more patients. We will honor donors’ gifts by demanding results.
Tens of thousands of organ donation operations happen each year in the United States, for everything from hearts to kidneys to corneas. Before this rule change, a clear line had been drawn between the two teams of doctors involved in organ donation. Doctors working to secure organs for transplants were not to be in conversation with potential donor patients or their families.
As an NPR article described about the change:
Previously, no one from that team was even supposed to talk to family members until after they had made the heart-wrenching decision to let a loved one go. The rule was intended to prevent pressure that could change the care patients receive. It was also in place to dispel any doubts that doctors aren’t doing everything they can to save patients.
The new rule will “allow discussions for organ donation to take place once end-of-life discussions are taking place with the potential deceased donor’s agent.” The new rule runs the risk of subjecting patients to competing interests. As bioethicist Dr. Lainie Ross told NPR:
When my family member is in that hospital bed, I want to know that we’re all on Team Mom and not worried the reason the doctor’s really suggesting the treatments aren’t working is because they want your organs for someone else.
Even under the previous rule, there are cases in which families fear death was hastened or pronounced prematurely to procure organs for transplant. In 2024, a Kentucky man who was prematurely declared dead was determined very much alive by a professional preparing to harvest his organs. Under the new rule, motivated professionals hoping to save lives could pressure grieving family members with the promise that another person might live, all in the name of the greater good.
A far worse-case scenario is if the legalization of “medical assistance in dying” or “death with dignity” expands to more states. When the “right to die” becomes a “duty to die,” as it always does, then this kind of policy leaves patients even more vulnerable.
The ethics of organ donation are complicated as it is. The much-heralded medical breakthrough, which has saved and improved hundreds of thousands of lives, has created what some have pronounced an “organ shortage crisis.” In this understanding, there is a need for more people to die in order to save some.
In his book, Bioethics: A Primer for Christians, Gilbert Meilaender appropriately warned:
Only by supporting organ transplantation in ways that do not lose the meaning of the body as the place of our personal presence, in ways that preserve the possibility of a humane death, and in ways that do not imply that staying alive as long as possible always has moral trump, can we become people who give thanks for medical progress without worshiping it or placing their trust in it. In becoming such people, we may bear a different kind of life-giving witness to our world.
The advances in medical technology are incredible. People now live longer and better than could’ve been imagined a few decades ago. Our good intentions, however, are not enough. In fact, they can blind us to a whole set of moral dangers that come with the progress.
Photo Credit: ©Piron Guillaume/Unsplash
John Stonestreet is President of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview, and radio host of BreakPoint, a daily national radio program providing thought-provoking commentaries on current events and life issues from a biblical worldview. John holds degrees from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (IL) and Bryan College (TN), and is the co-author of Making Sense of Your World: A Biblical Worldview.
The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of CrosswalkHeadlines.
BreakPoint is a program of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. BreakPoint commentaries offer incisive content people can't find anywhere else; content that cuts through the fog of relativism and the news cycle with truth and compassion. Founded by Chuck Colson (1931 – 2012) in 1991 as a daily radio broadcast, BreakPoint provides a Christian perspective on today's news and trends. Today, you can get it in written and a variety of audio formats: on the web, the radio, or your favorite podcast app on the go.
