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Germany

Ethics Debate In Germany: Are The Brain Dead Dead Enough For Organ Removal?

Is it OK for doctors to remove the organs of people who are brain dead but whose bodies still function metabolically? The German National Ethics Council grappled with the issue this week. One panelist supported the practice, saying the brain dead &quo

(Cea)
(Cea)
Matthias Kamann

BERLIN -- During discussions about organ donation on Thursday at Germany's federal parliament, the Bundestag, Green politician Jürgen Trittin shared a story about the death of someone he was close to. The woman died in a cycling accident, and it was up to Trittin to convey the news to her family. As difficult as that task was, it would have been worse, he said, if he'd also been responsible for deciding whether to donate his friend's organs.

"When I think that I would have been in the position of trying to interpret what she would have wanted…" he said.

The experience made Trittin realize first-hand just how important it is that people write an unmistakably clear statement about whether they want their organs donated when they die. Otherwise, a person's loved ones must end up making the agonizing decision.

Trittin's tale makes it clear there's more to the issue than just campaigns urging more people to donate. Indeed, there are a lot of delicate questions to be considered, such as how to find a decent compromise between the needs of loved ones, who want time to say goodbye, and the quick surgical action required to cull organs. Another example: intensive medicine is generally recommended for dying patients who plan to have their organs donated, and yet sometimes people prefer not to receive intensive care in their final days and hours.

And then there's the question of how to handle organ donation involving people who are deemed brain dead. The crux of the matter is this: Are the brain dead in fact dead?

"Decapitated from the inside"

The German National Ethics Council grappled with just that question in Berlin on Wednesday in a panel discussion attended by an audience of some 400. According to American neurologist Alan Shewmon, the brain dead are not dead. While it's true that they have complete loss of brain function, brain dead people continue, nevertheless, to function metabolically, he explained. Wounds heal. Brain dead children continue to develop to sexual maturity. A brain dead pregnant woman carried her living baby to term. Some brain dead patients require less intensive care than patients whose vitality nobody would question. "The brain dead are unconscious – but they are alive," Shewmon said.

No, countered Munich neurologist Stefanie Förderreuther: they are dead. Förderreuther compared a brain dead patient to somebody who had "been decapitated from the inside." The damaged brains of patients in a waking coma still show signs of activity. Not so the brains of brain dead patients. That some organs or hormonal activity continued to function was mainly due to support systems in intensive care. That kind of functioning, however, doesn't turn patients back into people "aware in both body and mind." Only the brain could do that. Ergo it was admissible to remove organs from the brain dead.

Most of the panel speakers shared Dr. Förderreuther's position. Moral theologian Eberhard Schockenhoff, for whom, as a Catholic, the protection of life is a particular duty, insisted on the fact that the brain dead are dead because they are no longer organically autonomous people, "body and soul."

That Schockenhoff and others placed so much importance on brain activity in the expression of human personality stood in stark juxtaposition to Shewmon's position, who spoke of life as a thermodynamic phenomenon.

Philosopher Ralf Stoecker, however, pointed out that we nevertheless handle the brain dead differently from the dead. The former may not be used for dissection by medical students, for example, because "they're personally dead, but they're otherwise alive," he said. And yet Stoecker supports organ removal from the brain dead because "they can't feel joy or pain, and you aren't taking any future away from them -- they are in a sphere that knows no time."

The controversy over when dead means dead is unlikely to be taken further in the discussion about organ donation in Germany. But the general debate about what constitutes death in the era of high performance medicine will go on. Finding solutions, according to philosopher Volker Gerhardt, will become ever more difficult because we've manipulated nature so much we don't have any fixed reference points any more. "Falling back on so-called ‘nature" is no longer an option," he said.

Read the original story in German

Photo - Cea

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Green

The Unsustainable Future Of Fish Farming — On Vivid Display In Turkish Waters

Currently, 60% of Turkey's fish currently comes from cultivation, also known as fish farming, compared to just 10% two decades ago. The short-sightedness of this shift risks eliminating fishing output from both the farms and the open seas along Turkey's 5,200 miles of coastline.

Photograph of two fishermen throwing a net into the Tigris river in Turkey.

Traditional fishermen on the Tigris river, Turkey.

Dûrzan Cîrano/Wikimeidia
İrfan Donat

ISTANBUL — Turkey's annual fish production includes 515,000 tons from cultivation and 335,000 tons came from fishing in open waters. In other words, 60% of Turkey's fish currently comes from cultivation, also known as fish farming.

It's a radical shift from just 20 years ago when some 600,000 tons, or 90% of the total output, came from fishing. Now, researchers are warning the current system dominated by fish farming is ultimately unsustainable in the country with 8,333 kilometers (5,177 miles) long.

Professor Mustafa Sarı from the Maritime Studies Faculty of Bandırma 17 Eylül University believes urgent action is needed: “Why were we getting 600,000 tons of fish from the seas in the 2000’s and only 300,000 now? Where did the other 300,000 tons of fish go?”

Professor Sarı is challenging the argument from certain sectors of the industry that cultivation is the more sustainable approach. “Now we are feeding the fish that we cultivate at the farms with the fish that we catch from nature," he explained. "The fish types that we cultivate at the farms are sea bass, sea bram, trout and salmon, which are fed with artificial feed produced at fish-feed factories. All of these fish-feeds must have a significant amount of fish flour and fish oil in them.”

That fish flour and fish oil inevitably must come from the sea. "We have to get them from natural sources. We need to catch 5.7 kilogram of fish from the seas in order to cultivate a sea bream of 1 kg," Sarı said. "Therefore, we are feeding the fish to the fish. We cannot cultivate fish at the farms if the fish in nature becomes extinct. The natural fish need to be protected. The consequences would be severe if the current policy is continued.”

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