What is wrong with organ transplants? Everything is wrong with it!

I will write several Blogs on the topic of organ transplants, why I disagree with this practice, and what is the explanation for my disagreement from the moral and ethical perspective.

The issues of moral and ethical values have been swept under the rug. Masquerading under so-called life-giving values, organ transplanting has become big business. In reality, practices surrounding organ “harvesting” is a “logical” conclusion of a materialistic view of human life, driven by self-centeredness and greed.

In Part 1, I have provided my basic opinion and provided the foundational reference that has provided guidance for my thoughts and conclusions. In the subsequent articles, I will write more details and expand my argument.

People all over the world have been made to believe that organ transplants are a wonderful and beneficial service for others. Doctors, celebrities, religious leaders, politicians and business people are encouraging people to donate their organs as well as to wait patiently for an organ to come their way. Gordon Brown is now advocating the “harvesting” of organs without explicit approval from the patients. Hospitals are setting up medical tourism to provide this service and increase revenue.

Sick people are encouraged to hang onto life in terrible pain and misery, waiting and waiting and hoping and hoping for a rescue. I recently saw a Television program in which an elderly person with heart problems was on a waiting list. He kept saying how he was daily hoping for a heart transplant. I wondered if he even thought for one minute that his wish for a heart meant that someone had to die first! Some child, some partner, some person had to be declared clinically dead and then held in life until his or her body parts could be removed.

Something is terribly wrong here. I know that it is popular to think that there is nothing wrong with organ transplants, but there is and there are many people in this world who strongly disagree with this practice. We need to speak up and protect ourselves.

When grisly details emerged about one nation (reported thus far) accused of deliberately timing executions of criminals and selling organs of the dead criminals, people made such a stink about it. Yet this kind of behavior is a logical outcome of the materialistic view of life and living. Now we hear that the “Health Ministry has explicitly banned sales of human organs in an apparent attempt to clean up the country’s lucrative but laxly regulated transplant business” (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12050522/). And Gordon Brown wants everyone to be on the waiting list so that parts of the bodies can be taken out unless you made sure to opt out. How nice that we hear reports of the efficiency with which Spain has such a policy and they are providing plenty of organs.

Surely there are many of us who disagree with this practice? See for example an excellent article by Michael Tymn. It is time that we give a loud voice to our opinions and beliefs. If you are one of these, and you reject organ harvesting, make sure that your family understands your wishes and that your Will explicitly states that you do not wish to have your body parts “harvested.”

Even this word “harvest” is interesting, as if we were picking oranges or apples or bananas to take to market, picked just at the right time!

The Esoteric Teachings speak clearly against organ transplants. To begin this series of articles, I have provided an excellent reprint of a Chapter from the book Other Worlds by Torkom Saraydarian, titled “Organ Transplants.” You are welcome to link to it and read it. In the next few weeks, I will expand on my opinions and conclusions and provide an alternative view of life and how we can deal with illness and the gift of living life after life.