Regulatory czar wants to regulate organ donation
Donations are supposed to be gifts, freely given. Especially when the gift is a bodily organ.
The rules for organ harvesting have already been changing for years. Now, new information is coming out about one of President Obama’s regulatory czars having an aggressive plan to remove organs from people who hadn’t designated themselves as donors.
The proposal could move the federal government closer into alignment with what has been proposed by longtime Barack Obama adviser Cass Sunstein.
Obama’s “regulatory czar” was revealed in 2009 to have pushed strongly for the removal of organs from those who did not give their consent to becoming an organ donor.
In his book, “Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness,” Sunstein and co-author Richard Thaler presented the possibility of the “routine removal” of organs because “the state owns the rights to body parts of people who are dead or in certain hopeless conditions, and it can remove their organs without asking anyone’s permission.”
What?
“Though it may sound grotesque, routine removal is not impossible to defend,” he wrote. “In theory, it would save lives, and it would do so without intruding on anyone who has any prospect for life.”
Not only grotesque, but bizarre…
He also has argued for presumed consent, the idea that anyone who has not left specific orders against organ donation is a voluntary contributor to the program, a plan that has been proposed in some state legislatures as recently as the last few years.
(emphasis added, for clarity)
A spokeswoman for the the operators of the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network told WND that a new round of public comments will be heard regarding the issue that the CMA said would allow those caring for critically ill patients to start considering them for their potential to donate organs while they remain alive.
“Gone [would be] the crucial wall separating patient care from donation solicitations,” said a letter this week from the chief of the CMA. “Such undue influence on difficult decisions at a heart-wrenching time is ethically unacceptable.”
So is deluding the public into thinking that taking public comment means they could make a difference in determining legislation. We have only to recall the HHS ‘public comment’ window on mandated contraceptive and elective sterilization coverage. HHS asserted up front that they had no requirement to act on anyone’s wishes, public or institutional or even congressional oversight. The reality, they reminded everyone, is that they have unchecked power. And they will wield it as they will.
