by Rhoda Wilson, Expose News:
In 2018, Canadian doctors were already openly discussing the possibility of harvesting organs from patients who have consented to euthanasia while they are still alive. This practice, sometimes referred to as “euthanasia by organ donation,” involves removing organs before the patient is declared dead. Although illegal, is it already happening?
The “dead donor rule” currently prohibits organ procurement until the donor is declared dead, typically five minutes after the heart has stopped beating. This means “euthanasia by organ donation,” or more accurately death by organ donation, is illegal. Changing the rules to allow it would require an amendment to the Criminal Code of Canada, as medical assistance in dying (“MAiD”) must involve the administration of medications, not organ extraction.
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In Canada, MAiD was legalised in 2016. By March 2017, there had already been instances where organs were harvested from patients who underwent suicide by doctors. In Ontario, for example, 26 people who died by lethal injection had donated tissue or organs since the law came into effect. This practice expanded the pool of available organs but also sparked debates about the ethical implications and the potential pressure on patients to consent to euthanasia if they wish to be organ donors. At the time, organ harvesting after euthanasia was already a reality in Belgium and the Netherlands.
The threat of people merely being seen as a source of organs to be harvested arose again in November 2018 when Canadian doctors debated killing euthanasia victims by taking their organs.
“The best use of my organs, if I’m going to receive a medically assisted death, might be to not first kill me and then retrieve my organs, but to have my mode of death – as we medically consider death now – to be to retrieve my organs,” Rob Sibbald, an ethicist of the London Health Sciences Centre in Ontario, said.
Riddled with conflicts of interest, the event Sibbald was speaking at was sponsored by the Canadian Blood Services, a tissue and organ donation group; the Trillium Gift of Life Network which is “responsible for delivering and coordinating organ and tissue donation and transplantation across the province” of Ontario; and, the Canadian Donation and Transplantation Research Program, which hopes to “increase the availability of transplants.”
“Other Canadian doctors have publicly embraced ‘death by donation’, and a study came out [in January 2024] exploring euthanasia programmes such as MAiD as a means of organ harvesting,” The Federalist reported yesterday.
The Federalist goes on to explain that Canada is the top country for organ donations through euthanasia. But, as of December 2022, the health system still had an organ shortage. “Health officials could be trying to close gaps like these by killing patients to harvest their organs,” The Federalist said.
Adding, “In Ontario, euthanasia deaths boosted organ donations in 2020. In Quebec, 14 per cent of organ donors were MAiD victims in 2022. One article in the Canadian Medical Association Journal includes a diagram of the MAiD to organ harvesting pipeline. This was from 2019 when euthanasia was only allowed for those with foreseeable deaths. Now, doctors can end the lives of patients with unforeseeable deaths.”
It’s not only organ harvesting for the domestic market that is cause for huge concern.
Angelina Ireland is the executive director of the Delta Hospice Society, an end-of-life care facility that the Canadian government shut down and subsequently took over due to its refusal to comply with the provincial MAiD policy. She warned, “They are now talking about ‘pre-mortem’ interventions to harvest organs of MAiD recipients” and there is “plenty of room for abuse.”
Ireland cited the book ‘The Red Market’, which traced human trafficking and organ harvesting around the world. “You can get big, big money on the world market,” she said. “We have opened ourselves up to some horrific stuff.”
A 2020 research paper published in the Library of the Canadian Parliament provided an overview of organ trafficking. It stated [emphasis added]:
