Survival of Patients With Liver Transplants Donated After Euthanasia, Circulatory Death, or Brain Death at a Single Center in Belgium

Nicholas Gilbo, Ina Jochmans, Daniel Jacobs-Tulleneers-Thevissen, Albert Wolthuis, Mauricio Sainz-Barriga, Jacques Pirenne, Diethard Monbaliu

Journal of the American Medical Association
Journal of the American Medical Association

Extract
Transplantation of organs donated after euthanasia may help alleviate the critical organ shortage.1 However, aside from preliminary data on lung transplantation,2 data on graft and patient survival following transplantation of organs donated after euthanasia are unavailable. Because donation after euthanasia entails a period of detrimental warm ischemia that hampers graft survival, similar to donation after circulatory death,3 results after transplantation of this type of graft need to be carefully evaluated.


Gilbo N, Jochmans I, Jacobs-Tulleneers-Thevissen D, Wolthuis A, Sainz-Barriga M, Pirenne  J, Monbaliu D.  Survival of Patients With Liver Transplants Donated After Euthanasia, Circulatory Death, or Brain Death at a Single Center in Belgium. JAMA. 2019;322(1):78-80. doi:10.1001/jama.2019.6553

Legal and ethical aspects of organ donation after euthanasia in Belgium and the Netherlands

Jan Bollen,Rankie Ten Hoopen, Dirk Ysebaert, Walther van Mook, Ernst van Heurn

Journal of Medical Ethics
Journal of Medical Ethics

Abstract
Organ donation after euthanasia has been performed more than 40 times in Belgium and the Netherlands together. Preliminary results of procedures that have been performed until now demonstrate that this leads to good medical results in the recipient of the organs. Several legal aspects could be changed to further facilitate the combination of organ donation and euthanasia. On the ethical side, several controversies remain, giving rise to an ongoing, but necessary and useful debate. Further experiences will clarify whether both procedures should be strictly separated and whether the dead donor rule should be strictly applied. Opinions still differ on whether the patient’s physician should address the possibility of organ donation after euthanasia, which laws should be adapted and which preparatory acts should be performed. These and other procedural issues potentially conflict with the patient’s request for organ donation or the circumstances in which euthanasia (without subsequent organ donation) traditionally occurs.


Bollen J, Ten Hoopen R, Ysebaert D, van Mook W, van Heurn E. Legal and ethical aspects of organ donation after euthanasia in Belgium and the Netherlands. J Med Ethics. 2016 Aug;42(8):486-9. doi: 10.1136/medethics-2015-102898. Epub 2016 Mar 24.

On the impermissibility of euthanasia in Catholic healthcare organizations

Ana S Iltis

Christian Bioethics
Christian Bioethics

Abstract
Roman Catholic healthcare institutions in the United States face a number of threats to the integrity of their missions, including the increasing religious and moral pluralism of society and the financial crisis many organizations face. These organizations in the United States often have fought fervently to avoid being obligated to provide interventions they deem intrinsically immoral, such as abortion. Such institutions no doubt have made numerous accommodations and changes in how they operate in response to the growing pluralism of our society, but they have resisted crossing certain lines and providing particular interventions deemed objectively wrong. Catholic hospitals in Belgium have responded differently to pluralism. In response to a growing diversity of moral views and to the Belgian Act of Euthanasia of 2002, Catholic hospitals in Belgium now engage in euthanasia. This essay examines a defense that has been offered of this practice of euthanasia in Catholic hospitals and argues that it is misguided.


Iltis AS. On the impermissibility of euthanasia in Catholic healthcare organizations. Christ Bioet. 2006;12(3):281-290.

Christian churches and euthanasia in the Low Countries: background, argumentation and commentary

Jans Jans

Ethical Perspectives
Ethical Perspectives

Extract
In this article, I will first describe the argumentative way in which the major Christian churches in the Netherlands and Belgium have dealt with what they considered the challenge of the demand to legalize euthanasia in their respective countries. Given the important differences between the courses of events in both countries, the part on the interventions in the Netherlands will be considerably longer than the one on Belgium. No doubt, the most important reason for this difference is the fact that the public discussion on euthanasia together with efforts to change the penal law prohibiting it, took shape in the Netherlands already from 1968 on. Next to this, the fact that the major Christian churches in the Netherlands were not in agreement on the proper approach also contributes to a more differentiated picture. In the third part of this article, I will present some comments and a moral theological evaluation of the core of the argumentation forwarded by the Christian churches.


Jans Jans. Christian churches and euthanasia in the Low Countries: background, argumentation and commentary. Ethical Perspect 2002;9(2-3) 119-33.