Yesterday I warned that we mustn’t let the Israeli government overstep its bounds – that our bodies are ours, and not the state’s, and we mustn’t allow the state to presume is is allowed to just automatically harvest organs out of our dead bodies without our explicit consent.
Too late.
The Israeli Ministry of Health isn’t waiting for any new law to pass to do what it wants to your body and your express wishes – because “there’s an organ shortage”, as they justify it.
I think someone must have put Professor Yehuda Hiss in charge. (You remember, the guy who illegally harvested at least 8000 undocumented organs in his government run forensic lab, while no one did anything about it).
A pilot project will begin in two weeks at the following hospitals: Soroka, Beilinson, Rambam and Hadassah. If the pilot is successful, Sheba and Ichalov will also join in.
The pilot program will go on for one year, with the goal of increasing organ harvesting by 20%. The pilot will only be run in the morning.
And what is this pilot program instituted by the government that we all love and trust?
If a person’s heart dies (not brain death), the doctors will wait five minutes (of course we still presume the medical staff will do all they can to make resuscitate you up to that point, right?).
After 5 minutes has passed, a harvesting team will enter the room, and if the patient signed an organ donor card – the team will automatically begin harvesting kidneys – even without the family’s knowledge or consent.
Let me repeat that last sentence for you.
If the patient died, and apparently, even if they wanted the family’s consent, these hospitals will not need the family’s consent to begin the organ harvesting, even though they actually have a full 2 hour window to harvest the kidneys and other organs.
Heck, the family doesn’t even need to know their close relative is dead before they start cutting in and ripping out. Now won’t that be a surprise, on top of everything else.
If the hospital does find the family (which of course we’re sure they’ll make every effort to do quickly), and the family doesn’t give consent, then the harvesting process will be stopped, at whatever stage it’s at.
But don’t worry, the state is doing this for the greater good.
Is there anything else they plan to take without asking first – for the greater good?