American doctors have suggested killing death sufferers by taking their tissues, according to various reports, whistleblowers, and open talks. Medical freedom advocates are documenting emerging ties between “medical assistance in dying” ( MAID ) and organ harvesting.
If I’m going to die in a medically assisted manner, the best way to use my organs is to have my mode of death, as we currently define death, been to get them, said Rob Sibbald, an ethicist from the London Health Sciences Centre in Ontario.
Sibbald spoke on” Risks to the Concept of Brain Death: Social Views” at the Essential Care Canada Forum in November 2018. The Trillium Gift of Life Network, a cell and tissue payment organization “responsible for delivering and coordinating organ and tissue donation and transplantation across the state of Ontario,” and the French Donation and Transplantation Research Program, which aims to “increase the presence of transplants,” sponsored the occasion.
Other Canadian doctors have publicly embraced the practice of “death by donation,” and a study investigating MAID-style euthanasia programs was published earlier this year. In 2016, Canada made euthanasia legal, and since then, there have been significantly more Canadians who have used MAID to commit suicide.
‘ Is the Dead Donor Rule Even Relevant?’
According to Sibbald’s biography, he co-directs the” Canadian unit of the International Network of the UNESCO chair in bioethics.” He suggested obviating the lines between the “dead donor rule,” a renowned medical ethics rule that mandates that donors die of another natural cause before being allowed to donate their organs.  ,
” We’re so invested in this dead donor rule”, Sibbald said. That rule has become such a foundational principle in the medical field, according to the author. And I believe there are people who are also questioned about that value right now. And I know there’s perhaps not an appetite to go there, but raising the question — is the dead donor rule even relevant”?
He suggested that death may not occur at a particular point in time, and that harvesting organs from patients who are “going to receive a medically assisted death” might be the best way to do so while the victim is still alive.
If you must accept that if that is what you mean by the dead donor rule, you must consider me dead once you have placed me under and have no intention of bringing me back, Sibbald said.
The ethicist made the implication that doctors should ask for forgiveness rather than permission before making this choice.
” I think legally, yes, we do need an answer, and we’re going to come to that”, Sibbald said. However, we can continue to allow physicians to decide and let the conflict go to the courts of law out of the options available to us for our pragmatic issues.
However, Sibbald told The Federalist,” Nothing from my previous comments should be taken as a suggestion that physicians should operate within the bounds of current legal or professional ethical standards.”
Instead, I’ve suggested that in light of recent legal developments, we should consider whether other legal or professional standards are currently in need of updating or revising, Sibbald said.
In a September 2018 article he co-authored for The New England Journal of Medicine, Sibbald claimed that the dead donor rule is in line with the “perceived requirement to maintain the firewall between what is done for the patient ( facilitating a quick and peaceful death ) and what is done for potential organ recipients ( retrieving organs that have the least possible injury ).” These tenets are less persuasive in circumstances of voluntary euthanasia.
Some MAID recipients “may want to be certain that organ procurement won’t begin before they are declared dead,” but others may want” the option of donating as many organs as possible and in the best condition possible,” the article claims.
The article states that “following the dead donor rule could interfere with the ability of these patients to accomplish their goal.” It may be preferable to procure the patient’s organs in such cases, in the same way that organs are used to procure brain-dead patients ( with the use of general anesthesia to ensure the patient’s comfort )”.
However, obtaining organs from patients who are still alive would necessitate an “amendment to the Criminal Code of Canada, which defines medical assistance in dying as the administration of a” substance” by a qualified provider. By this definition”, the article noted, “organ retrieval is not an accepted cause of death”.
Patients who emphasize “optimizing the number of organs they can donate are best cared for in an operative setting, where they can be fully anesthetized, and where optimal organ procurement is supported,” according to the article, noting that “patients who prefer to donate their organs after death” have “more flexibility” about where the euthanasia takes place.  ,
Killing Patients for Their Organs
The top nation for organ donations through euthanasia is Canada. Still, its national health system had an organ shortage in December 2022, with more than 3, 700 patients awaiting a transplant. According to anti-euthanasia advocates, health officials may be trying to close these gaps by killing patients to extract their organs.
The Federalist Roger Foley, a disabled whistleblower who claims he has been subjected to euthanasia four times, claimed that the speech’s suggestion that doctors may have taken organs from live patients.
” His statement is like,’ We’ll just do it anyway, we’ll let the physicians do it. And after they start doing it, if there’s ever a complaint, then it will go to the courts, and then the courts can decide if this is right or wrong,'” Foley said. ” It could be they’re already doing euthanasia by organ harvesting, we just don’t know about it”.
He called MAID a” sliding practice” due to “ableism and disdain for persons with disabilities and the vulnerable”.
According to Foley,” This sliding causes not only to the expansion of eligibility criteria, but also to the use of euthanasia organ harvesting techniques.” Because of their age, euthanasia and assisted suicide are not permitted anywhere. The emphasis should be placed on improving palliative care at the end of life and improving supports for vulnerable people to live.
Another disabled patient, Heather Hancock, claimed doctors pressured her to accept MAID, claimed that euthanasia victims are another way for doctors to get organs.  ,
” Suddenly organ transplants have gone up since MAID’s been involved. New patients are eligible to be donors”, Hancock said.
She added that preventing illness helps pay for Canada’s public health system.
“MAID is a huge money-making business — now they’re saving money on future healthcare”, Hancock said. They literally aren’t giving us medical care and instead offering us MAID.
According to the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, doctors repeatedly attempted to remove one patient’s life support without his consent. One afternoon when the patient’s mother was in the hospital, the doctors denied him oxygen above 60 percent, according to JCCF. The same day, he died. The patient had participated in efforts to promote religious and medical freedom. In a similar case, a former Canadian politician said he had to “flee with his family to the United States” because doctors told him they would remove his son who drowned from life support, after which “his organs could then be ‘ harvested,'” according to LifeSiteNews.
Hancock predicted that the situation would get worse as MAID restrictions became tighter over time. The Trillium Gift of Life Network, one of the organizations that sponsored Sibbald’s speech on premortem harvesting, advises doctors to ask MAID patients about getting their organs, according to The Christian Post.  ,
In Ontario, euthanasia deaths boosted organ donations in 2020. In Quebec, 14 percent of organ donors were MAID victims in 2022. A diagram of the MAID to organ harvesting pipeline is included in one article in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. This was in 2019, when only people with foreseeable deaths could be put to death. Doctors can now cause unanticipated deaths to end patients ‘ lives.
A diagram depicting the MAID to organ harvesting pipeline
Images Credit: James Downar et al. | Canadian Medical Association Journal
The Canadian government shut down and then took over the end-of-life care facility known as the Delta Hospice Society because it refused to terminate its patients. Angelina Ireland is executive director of the facility. The group now advocates against euthanasia. Ireland said the dead donor rule is” all in question”.
” They are now talking about’ pre-mortem’ interventions to harvest organs of MAID recipients”, Ireland told The Federalist. ” That’s the question — what the h-ll is going on”?
There is “plenty of room for abuse,” according to Ireland. She cited the book” The Red Market,” which documented human trafficking and organ harvesting all over the world.  ,
” You can get big, big money on the world market”, she said.  ,” We have opened ourselves up to some horrific stuff”.
Organ trafficking rises from a “desperate need for organ transplantation surgeries” and takes the form of a “lucrative, transnational criminal enterprise”, according to Canada’s Library of Parliament. Trafficked organs constitute up to 10 percent of organ transplants worldwide, the study says. A kidney can range from$ 50, 000 to$ 120, 000.
According to the library, “purchasers are typically wealthy individuals from developed countries like Canada.” A “local recruiter,” a “local broker,” “medical professionals and local hospitals performing the illicit organ removal” are frequently included in the network.
” It is the ,’ Canadian cull ‘ , — a systematic elimination of the weak, sick, old, and vulnerable via the state euthanasia program called MAID”, Ireland said. ” The Government , has taken the most sacred right from its citizens, the power to kill them”.
Socialized medicine, according to her, has serious problems despite the complaints of some Americans about private healthcare.
” In a public health-care system, there are a whole new set of mafioso who are deciding to take a person’s body and soul”, Ireland said. ” There is no recourse and no justice”.
Logan Washburn is a staff writer who writes about the integrity of elections. He is a The College Fix spring 2025 fellow. He graduated from Hillsdale College, served as Christopher Rufo’s editorial assistant, and has bylines in The Wall Street Journal, The Tennessean, and The Daily Caller. Logan grew up in rural Michigan but is originally from Central Oregon.
