Medical Journal Article Supports Conjoining Euthanasia and Organ Harvesting

This article is published by National Review online on October 27, 2025.

Wesley Smith

By Wesley J Smith

Back in 1993, in my first anti-euthanasia piece, I warned that once assisted suicide became normalized, it would soon be conjoined with organ harvesting “as a plum to society.” What I didn’t expect was for the leaders of the organ-transplant medical sector to applaud.

I thought they would understand that conjoining organ procurement with euthanasia would create an incentive to be killed. That has happened more than once, and yet organ-transplant and other medical journals continue to publish studies supportive of kill and harvest (my term).

The Journal of Hepatology published an article that cheers the process of performing a liver transplant with the organ of a person who received a lethal jab in Canada. From “Utilization of Liver Grafts Obtained After Medical Assistance in Dying” (citations omitted):

In most cases, the eligible patient is admitted to the hospital, and the MAiD medications are administered in a designated care room – most often a private room in the intensive care unit – in the presence of family or friends, according to the patient’s wishes. The medications are administered intravenously and, although some slight variations exist, most commonly include: 1) heparin at a dose of 1,000 units per kg body weight; 2) benzodiazepine (i.e. midazolam) to induce relaxation; 3) propofol to induce deep coma which also ensures that the patient is fully unconscious and does not experience any discomfort; 4) neuromuscular blockers (i.e. rocuronium) which leads to cessation of spontaneous breathing and, subsequently, death…The patient is then transported to the operating room for the organ procurement. Throughout the process, no member of the procurement team is involved in the MAiD procedure.

Let’s understand what is happening here. A patient becomes suicidal and asks to be killed. He or she is not offered suicide prevention but instead becomes objectified and viewed as a potential organ farm.

This should be profoundly upsetting to the medical sector as it comes very close to violating a corollary to the dead donor rule (only the dead can donate vital organs) that prohibits killing patients for their body parts. To get around that, apologists for conjoining euthanasia and harvesting pretend that the two events are separate.

But are they really? Canadian and other media have made a big deal out of the potential to be killed and donate. People are being “educated” about that potential all the time — one might even say persuaded.

And indeed, in some cases, donating organs can become a strong incentive for being killed, as happened with a 16-year-old brain cancer patient in Belgium. From the glowing story in Le Soir:

She is fifteen years old for a few more days, her eyes sparkling, full of life. . . . It’s summer, the weather is very nice on the heights of Liège, the sun is cascading on its bed. Eva will celebrate her birthday on Sunday – sixteen years old! – and she has long and patiently chosen her gift: she is going to die. . . .

Yes, she wants to die, without too much delay. But not just any old way. She will leave this world through the great door, that of generous souls. She wants to give her heart, her liver, her kidneys, her lungs, she wants to give her body to everyone who needs it here on earth, since this life didn’t really want her and she reluctantly decided to go up there.

Understand that the timing of that kill and harvest was dictated by the desire to donate.

But the patient gave her consent, you may say. Sorry, if consent is all that matters, it opens the door to all kinds of horrors. A civilized society that protects the vulnerable should not countenance them.

Back to the medical journal article:

The favorable results [successful grafts], relative to DCD-III, justify careful discussion of organ donation with individuals seeking MAiD, provided that core ethical principles of autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice are strictly upheld, along with rigorous safeguards. Liver donation following MAiD has the potential to expand the donor pool and help meet the growing clinical demand for organs.

There you have it: euthanasia and organ harvesting as a plum to society. The next step will be organ harvesting as the means of euthanasia, which has already been proposed in major journals because it’s better for the organs. Ugh.