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Belgian surgeons have quietly announced that they have a new source for lung transplants – euthanased patients. Of course Belgium is a small country, but between 2007 and 2012, one in eight lung transplants came from patients who had donated them after voluntary euthanasia.

From a pragmatic point of view, it makes good sense. It must be easier to plan out the operation and the lungs will be healthy. Of the six patients who were killed by their doctors, 3 suffered from severe neuromuscular disease (presumably ALS or motor neurone disease) and 3 from a “neuropsychiatric disorder”, presumably depression or schizophrenia.

However, pragmatic considerations are not necessarily the only ones to be considered when lives are at stake. Is it really ethical to kill a patient for his organs? However rosy a picture the doctors paint of this procedure, this is what it amounts to. Another article below points out that it is possible to implant false memories in people’s minds. Surely it is possible to implant a desire to make an altruistic donation in a sick patient.

This is a significant development. It shows that if euthanasia is legalised, there will – almost inevitably – be abuses, sanctioned, of course, by ethics committees and the government. The human body is a valuable commodity; doctors are bound to think that it would be a crime to let it go to waste.

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With a shortage of organ donors in Europe, Belgian doctors have a novel solution: patients with unbearable suffering donate their organs after voluntary euthanasia. This suggestion was put forward at the 21st Conference for General Thoractic Surgery in Birmingham, England, in May.

A paper presented by doctors from The University Hospitals, Leuven (see abstract 0-099) suggested that euthanized patients could significantly boost the number of deceased donors. The authors state that in Belgium “euthanasia donors accounted for 12.8% of all lung DCD’s”. They observe that “immediate post-transplant graft function and long-term outcome in recipients was excellent.” Furthermore, it is believed that patients will see this as a great opportunity for a final act of altruism. “More euthanasia donors are to be expected with more public awareness,” they say.

The 12.8% were actually 6 patients. Three of them had severe neuromuscular disease and 3 were mentally ill. They had all made an explicit request to donate their organs. The transplant specialists stressed that the euthanasia and the transplant were performed by two separate and unrelated teams.

Conservative bioethicist Wesley Smith has attacked the proposal, stating that there is “nothing more dangerous than making mentally ill and despairing disabled people believe their deaths have greater value than their lives”.