Killing for organs

One reason that it is unethical to take organ donations from prisoners condemned to die is that such a policy will
one: Influence the condemned prisoner not to try to get the sentence overturned, since he figures that his death can result in a compensation for his crime.
Two: It makes juries more likely to pass the death penalty, figuring that keeping the guy in jail for 50 years cost money, but executing him is a "twofer": get revenge/justice for the families and (by using organs) save a third person's life.

So that is why this report from Belgium, about taking the organs from the handicapped and mentally ill, is so disturbing: Both of these groups are vulnerable to be coerced into dying in teh first place (relatives who agree with their depression are not "helping" the person as much as confirming to the person that they are a burden and yes, they wish the  handicapped person should die).

From Lifesite:

Belgium is really gearing up its euthanasia followed by organ harvesting regime–and apparently the transplant medical community has no moral qualms. In fact, it has become so morally ho-hum, that it was the subject of discussion at the 21st European Conference on General Thoracic Surgery held in the UK in May.
It’s all just peachy keen. From the Abstract (0-099) of “Lung Transplantation with Grafts Recovered From Euthanasia Donors:

January 2007 and December 2012, 47/350 (13.4%) patients received pulmonary grafts from controlled DCDs [donation after cardiac death], including 6 (1.7%) after euthanasia in accordance with state legislation and approval by Ethics Committee. Patients suffered from an unbearable neuromuscular (n = 3) or neuropsychiatric (n = 3) disorder with explicit wish to donate organs. Euthanasia was executed by an independent physician in a room adjacent to the operating room in the absence of the retrieval team.

Did you get that? One set of doctors killed the patient, stepped out of the room, and another set of doctors entered for the harvest.
Now, the hunt is on for mentally ill and patients with disabling conditions such as MS to become “euthanasia organ donors.”

Euthanasia donors accounted for 12.8% of all lung DCDs. Immediate post-transplant graft function and long-term outcome in recipients was excellent. More euthanasia donors are to be expected with more public awareness.

In a better world, increased public awareness would cause universal public revulsion.
I can think of nothing more dangerous than making mentally ill and despairing disabled people believe their deaths have greater value than their lives. Well one thing, perhaps: Having a society accept the idea that it can benefit at the expense of people in desperate need of care–and whose care is very expensive.

The Holy Family in Egypt

Historian Phillip Jenkins writes about the time Jesus spent in Egypt, and links to some Coptic sites...

Egyptians, though – and by no means all Christian – have no such doubts.  For centuries, believers have identified a well-known series of sites as places that the Family stayed on their route, a remarkably extensive tour that covered much of the country. This site (from http://www.holyfamilyegypt.com/) offers a lively virtual tour of the key places. (Please note that it’s a commercial site and I am making no comment or recommendation, either positive or negative, about its services).

Most of the sites are marked by churches, shrines or monasteries, and it is open to debate whether these holy places developed to commemorate the stopping places, or if the itinerary took its present shape to include the most important Christian destinations. The whole route is immensely appealing to pilgrims as well as tourists. (Sadly, of course, neither tourism nor pilgrimage are likely to be flourishing industries in Egypt for quite some time to come).

Forgive us our sins

The heroine of the day is a teacher who talked a murderous shooter out of killing schoolchildren.

Via GetReligion:

The story the reader sent in, from ABC News/Yahoo included the following passages:

Hill, according to Tuff, said he had no reason to live because nobody loved him.
“And I just explained to him that I loved him,” Tuff told ABC News in an exclusive interview Tuesday night. “I didn’t know much about him. I didn’t know his name but I did love him and it was scary because I knew at that moment he was ready to take my life along with his, and if I didn’t say the right thing, then we all would be dead.”…
“I knew at that time it was bigger than me,” she said. “He was really a hurting young man, so I just started praying for him. And just started talking to him and allowing him to know everything that was going on with me and that everything was going to be OK.”
Then Tuff made the request that she said helped end the standoff. She asked the suspect to put his weapons down, empty his pockets and backpack and lie on the floor.
“He brought a gun bag, a book bag, a bag full of ammunitions in there, a bunch of magazine clips in there, a whole lot of stuff,” she said…
Tuff said she will be returning to work later this morning.
“Yes, I will be back,” she said, “sitting in that same seat, blessing that next person.”

 ----------------------------

in the Philippines, such people are called "amoks".


a lot of these types are full of hate, because they were hated or thought they were hated or were angry about what they saw as an injustice.... "anti depression" medicine can cause rage, but I wonder if they don't cause rage as much as remove the barriers to expressing the rage within. And not only medicines, but street drugs and even deep discussion can cause that rage to explode outward, instead of inward into depression and suicide. The internet, which is full of echochambers of hate speech on all sides of the political spectrum don't help, nor does the constant theme about the need for revenge of films/rap songs/tv shows, and politicians manipulating hatred of their enemies to distract people from the real problems of society on tv news.



The problem is that the way to "cure" this is to establish trust between the person and someone else, and to reprogam the self hatred/depression/rage.


God's love can heal that hatred, but even then, it is often only a start.


I remember one tv program about forgiveness that I kept in mind: They told of horrific crime where some teenaged girls stabbed a grandmother who taught sunday school. And one of her grandsons was full of hate, and suddenly in the midst of work realized he had done things that needed forgiveness too...(forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us).


He ended up visiting the unrepentant girl and telling her he forgave her...leading eventually to her own rehabilitation.

If someone had done this when I was growing up, said the girl, I never would have done this terrible deed...

Darwin, the british elites and philosophical stuff

Long essay by Canadian David Warren linked for later reading. LINK

These were people long habituated to identifying wherever they were standing as the high moral ground. With that goes the habit of demonizing anyone not standing with you, & the technique of substituting defamation for debate. To my mind, the nasal tone of today’s “political correctness” owes as much to descent from the Clapham Sect, as to later Soviet inspirations; & the catastrophic relaxation of intellectual standards, to that refusal to debate.

yes: That is what disturbs me: especially the two minute hate that my facebook friend routinely puts on my facebook page.

Welcome aboard, Miss Keynes.
What fascinates me is the suggestion that a significant impetus to her conversion came from actually reading the aggressive “New Atheists” of her own (former) tribe. She describes, “the strange mix of angry emotion I encountered there: anger at the thought of God; anger at any restrictions on behaviour; anger at thwarted will; pride in the exertion of will; pride in feeling intellectually superior; contempt for anyone who reveals human vulnerability in asking for the grace of God. It’s important to remember that where there’s anger, there’s often pain. I see a lot of pain there. I think it stems from clinging to the idea that we’re in control, that we have autonomy.”

One of the things I have against Oprah is that she preaches the idea that if you wish it , you will do it. Pride and complete control of your life, which lets you ignore the street people caught in the latest Manila flood while your donation to PETA pays for rich white Americans/Canadians to parade around naked in Manila to insist that vegetarianism is the way to go, never mind that for most poor folks vegetarianism means pellegra and kwashiorkor for their kids.

More: “The question of whether the existence of God is demonstrable by rational argument has kept philosophers & theologians busy for centuries. I’d ask the claimant to explain how closing this discussion furthers the cause of reason. So I’d respond gently, but if I really lost my patience, I’d tell them: ‘Just go & read Aquinas!’ ”

ah, but that's the point, isn't it?

They don't believe in nothing: They believe in their own self: ME ME ME!

and right now, I am busy reading Koontz' series Odd Thomas, where the evildoers are not monsters per se but human monsters who live the "ME ME ME" life to the fullest...sigh.