Commentary by Susan Brinkmann, OCDS

In what sounds like something out of a ghoulish new horror movie, officials at the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) are proposing that women whose unborn infants develop fatal defects in the early months of pregnancy be permitted to carry the baby to term so that it’s organs can be harvested after birth.

The Daily Mail is reporting on the proposal which is aimed at acquiring more organs which are in critically short supply.

“We are looking at rolling it out as a viable source of organ transplantation nationally,” said transplant surgeon Niaz Ahmad, of St James’s University Hospital in Leeds. “A number of staff in the NHS are not aware that these organs can be used. They need to be aware. These can be transplanted, they work, and they work long-term.”

For instance, babies who are diagnosed with a fatal brain defect called anencephaly, a condition where the baby is missing a large portion of the brain, head and scalp, can be detected as early as 12 weeks. Instead of aborting the baby, the mother could opt to carry the child to term and, once doctors have certified it to be dead, its vital organs would be harvested.

In some cases, babies could be certified brain dead but their bodies kept alive via artificial ventilation. Called “heartbeat babies”, their organs are then harvested while “fresh”, thus maximizing the chances of a successful transplant.

Guidelines for the procedure call for no mention of organ donation while the woman is deciding whether to abort the child. Instead, doctors will wait for women to approach the NHS transplant service themselves.

The NHS Blood and Transplant states: ‘Under no circumstances would our staff or anybody else within the NHS pressure women to continue with a pregnancy solely for the possibility of organ donation.’

Not surprisingly, Dr. Ahmad said those conditions could change. “There is a real potential for using these organs [and] we are going to discuss whether it is an option, somehow, to tell women in this situation, that organ donation is an option,” he told the Mail.

This seems to be the attitude of some medical personnel who were polled about the “ethically controversial, yet increasingly practical issue” of harvesting organs from babies with anencephaly and other fatal defects.

Dr Joe Brierley, a specialist at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, surveyed medics working with newborn babies and found three-quarters thought it “acceptable to carry out donation from anencephalic infants”, the Mail reports.

However, one in five thought it might jeopardize how the public viewed organ donation.

“We are seeing more women saying, ‘I don’t think it is right to terminate’,” Dr. Brierley said. “It is then a case of them having conversations with NHS staff about the options.”

The rationale for the new program is based on the 7,000-member waiting list for organs in the UK which sees three patients die every day while awaiting an organ. In the case of anencephaly, about 230 babies with the condition are aborted every year with only a dozen being born alive.

Experts at the annual meeting of the British Transplantation Society in Glasgow discussed how to raise the issue of organ donation with parents and are planning to set up a committee tasked with acquiring more organs from newborns and very young babies.

“Given that three people a day die waiting for an organ transplant, I welcome anything that improves the number of donors,” Dr. Brierley said.

Dr Trevor Stammers, Director for Bioethics St Mary’s University, does not agree.

“It would be frankly abhorrent if transplant doctors were to ask women whose unborn children have been diagnosed with severe defects to let their baby go to term for the sole reason that its body can be raided for its organs,” Dr. Stammers said.

“Mothers electing to carry babies with such severe defects to term – because they would love the child as it is for as long as it should live – have, up till now, often been pressured to abort anyway.”

Even if a mother does agree to carry the child to term for organ donation purposes, “What happens if they change their mind once they see their newborn son or daughter,” Dr. Stammers asks.

“It is a ghoulish suggestion that can only undermine public confidence in transplantation – one the greatest medical advances of my lifetime. The concept reduces the baby to nothing more than a utilitarian means to an end – a collection of spare parts – rather than respecting life for its own sake.”

Yes, the organs can save lives, he said, “but at what cost to our humanity?”

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