Edited: April 13, 2020, v 2.1

Continued from Part 3

https://beadonor.ca/about-donation

Note that this is a website that promotes organ donation in Ontario. Claims are made on this page, including how organ donation saves the lives of some people and enhances the lives of others.

The point to make here is that the bottom of the page shows you that this is actually run by an agency of the Government of Ontario. The front-line websites and documents that promote organ donation are familiar to residents of Ontario. These are the agencies that manage your driver’s license and vehicle registration, and they mail out information promoting organ donation registration along with driver’s license renewals.

This site [beadonor.ca] is managed by Trillium Gift of Life Network, Ontario’s government agency responsible for organ and tissue donation and transplant

And there are three logos also:
1. http://www.giftoflife.on.ca/en/: Trillium Gift of Life Network
2. http://www.serviceontario.ca/: Service Ontario: Driver’s licenses, health cards, etc.
3. And the Ontario government logo

Here are the vehicle collision statistics for Canada (Ontario and other provinces) for 2017:
https://www.tc.gc.ca/eng/motorvehiclesafety/canadian-motor-vehicle-traffic-collision-statistics-2017.html (original link, new link: https://tc.canada.ca/en/road-transportation/statistics-data/canadian-motor-vehicle-traffic-collision-statistics-2017). Just to single out the statistics relating to death (within 30 days of the collision), the number of fatal collisions was 1,679 and the number of fatalities associated with those collisions was 1,841.

A basic concern I would have is whether it is ethically appropriate to associate these things in any way policy-wise–even if it’s never implied or stated by anyone. I don’t want to use the image that comes to mind of birds by the side of the road but I just did. I think that society needs to uphold the highest standards for how human beings are treated in life and in death. And I think there is a real problem in general and I think people are asleep to it and far too trusting.

I think that highways and roads should be as safe as possible. However, I don’t think that there has been enough investment in these things because I think the future is planned out in a totally different way that restricts movement, settlement areas and population (and I’ll leave it at that, I’ll refer readers to my posts on Agenda 21, smart cities, smart growth–“Places to Grow” is the Ontario policy).

I think I mentioned already that Huxley’s Brave New World refers to the recycling of human bodies to use for energy–and there have been news reports like that in recent years where organizations have been promoting this concept.

In my mind, that brings up a strange association with the recycling policies we have been trained into and emotionally invested over recent decades–as humans are intentionally associated with being waste producers. But the words reduce, reuse, recycle come to mind when I think of the projects of certain supposed philanthropists and their recommendations for human “health” at this time and for reducing human population.

There was an ancient system we discarded that held that human life was sacred and we replace it with what? We just let elites replace these traditions and fill in the holes with propaganda.

So maybe I’m just setting off as many touchy subjects as possible, so it wouldn’t matter perhaps if I threw in the old global anti-smoking campaign at this point and suggest that (besides restricting freedom like many policies do) it distracted at the time from the issue of chemical additives–and then I could point back to how the elites via people like Bernays and countless celebrities promoted smoking for a long time–and then I could bring up the number of cancer deaths (which I’ve referred to in a recent post) every year, which in 2019, in Canada, works out to 225 per day.

If you feel sensitive about these subjects, I’m not surprised. That’s how we are trained–with slogans and emotional manipulation–full blast with high tech. Better to dig into some facts and think things through.

Going to this page on “Donation Process”:

https://beadonor.ca/about-donation/donation-process

. . . Specially trained staff will then share registration details with your family during end-of-life discussions, to help them make a choice about donation. By registering your consent to donate, you relieve your family of the burden of making this decision on your behalf. . .

. . . Once a family has consented to donation, testing is done . . .

Again, it sounds like they are saying that they want the consent of the family even if the person did register for organ donation.

. . . only three per cent of hospital deaths occur in circumstances that may lead to organ donation. This is not the case for tissue donation, which can take place in most cases when someone has died . . .

Registration: Key Facts page: https://beadonor.ca/about-donation/key-facts

They are careful to reassure the public with the following claims:

Donor registration is confidential and will not impact one’s medical care. Registration status is only accessed at end-of-life . . .

Here’s a question: Who has access and what prevents anyone from accessing your status (or even changing it)? What prevents corruption or carelessly illegal behavior?

What enforces ethical behavior? Are right and wrong clear in everyone’s mind? Or is it all about money? What ethics do doctors learn and follow now? Who comes up with the ethics when schools have been pushing life-boat ethics for a long time (I’ve seen this in an Ontario high school correspondence course), which totally contradicts traditional and standard ideas of ethics? People have just accepted everything that has been given to them as if it is legitimate. Maybe some concepts are intentionally subversive in order to alter our society (so that humans can be used and abused freely) and ethically invalid–how would anyone know if they are taught that every opinion is legitimate. Many students all these years have probably grown up confused and paralyzed in their thinking because of these contradictions, and some of them may have just adopted the life-boat ethics scenarios which imply that some people are less worthy than others (“unfit”)–so that the strong dominate the weak. That’s what it amounts to. Who told teachers that was legitimate? The fact is that is what some people believe and they want it passed on to others.

In any case, think there is a flimsy basis on which to trust people in power–including medical authorities and professionals–with the most sensitive kind of information.

But isn’t that what computers and networks are for? Collecting and sharing information in order that a technocracy can manage our lives. These are fundamental facts of our existence now. Information is power.

Are there ideologies involved? Does an authoritarian managerial type of ideology dominate government programs and health care–with a different kind of ethics from the traditional ethics? It certainly seems to be a factor with those who have tried to push automatic registration–which someone would have to “opt out” of if they didn’t want to participate–so that system is called opt-out.

See https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/282905

[I am editing these posts to use the right terminology. My apologies for mixing up the terms opt-in and opt-out.]

In the past, I also worked on a series that investigated efforts to eliminate freedom of conscience among health care workers.

Moving to their other website, we get more specifics:

https://www.giftoflife.on.ca/en/transplant.htm

Scroll down to “Organ Transplants”

Organs that can be transplanted are the liver, small bowel, kidney, pancreas, heart, and lung.

. . . Lungs can come from either a deceased or living donor.

So, there’s an example of how a donation can come from either a deceased or living donor.

The information on this page focuses more on Living Donation.

https://www.giftoflife.on.ca/en/

More than 85% of Ontarians are in favour of organ donation . . .

which is a marketing line.

It indicates that some people have concerns which are being downplayed or dismissed.

Do most people ever hear the negatives on this subject, or are they just overwhelmed with very limited, one-sided information?

So it’s all about selling people on this process and about convincing them it’s all good and there’s nothing to worry about. And I’m questioning that.

And it seems to be such a priority, which I commented on earlier when, as a taxpayer, I was wondering who decides what priorities and values the government follows.

I perceive that there is a Brave New World value set that elites are pushing towards in their administration of society. Is it the government’s job to modify our beliefs and condition us to change our attitudes? They think it is. It’s called “nudge” or “behavior modification.” A long time ago, Edward Bernays wrote in Propaganda that elites guide society and “democracy” in this sort of way, using propaganda and marketing techniques. But that doesn’t match the ideals that most people have about who the government should represent and what role it should play.

The government’s role should be more objective and it should be scrutinizing techniques and processes if they come into question. I would think there must be some of that going but I don’t think it is independent.

Governments are too busy making declarations and telling us what to think–about so many surprising things–from chemicals and drugs to medical procedures to food–actually many things that are very personal and biological.

There is too much going on with the big agendas–and it is really a public private partnership–as UN documents like Agenda 21 indicate and as many events indicate.

It was easier to find more detail at U.S. websites like this U.S. government site:
https://www.organdonor.gov/about/process/deceased-donation.html#register

The Deceased Donation Process

Medical Care of Potential Donors

For someone to become a deceased donor, he or she has to die in very specific circumstances. Most often, a patient comes to a hospital because of illness or accident, such as a severe head trauma, a brain aneurysm or stroke.

The patient is put on artificial or mechanical support, which keeps blood with oxygen flowing to the organs. The medical team does everything possible to save the patient’s life. At this point, whether or not the person is a registered donor is not considered.

Brain Death Testing

Even though the medical team members do everything they can to save the patient’s life, . . . . the patient dies.

Note the word “dies.” It seems so clear-cut but is it? Note that it was mentioned that the patient was already put on artificial support earlier. So, either they leave it on or turn it back on after determining the person was dead–in order to keep the oxygen flowing to the organs.

If the patient is dead and is not responding, physicians will perform a series of tests to determine if brain death has occurred. A patient who is brain dead has no brain activity and cannot breathe on his or her own. Brain death is death and it is irreversible. Someone who is brain dead cannot recover.

So just in that paragraph it indicates that they disconnect the artificial support in order to test whether the patient can breathe without it. So there’s a simple ethical problem just in doing that and this is confirmed with the description of brain death tests which I will include later.

Then there are the dubiously absolute statements to reassure the reader that it is “irreversible” and “cannot recover.” Is it scientific to make declarations like that without citations and possibly pointing to opposing opinions and experiences? No, it’s marketing and although it seems to be based on a materialistic view of human beings, it’s like a religious declaration also–it’s part of a set of beliefs and values we are supposed to adopt from authority. So that’s a second problem. I would question the absoluteness of that statement. I’ll provide a website later that provides stories to the contrary and maybe readers will know of experiences or information about similar experiences they’ve had.

Only after brain death has been confirmed and the time of death noted, can organ donation become a possibility.

So this point about declaring a “time of death” is important to the process. Here we are with the declarations. Someone decides this, whether it’s justified or not.

People should be aware of the details of brain death testing since it affects potentially everyone who registers and their families, and potentially every person if someone decides someday to change the registration policy in Ontario to opt-out [corrected] (a system where people are automatically registered and would have to “opt out” to remove their consent–and politicians have proposed this in the past).

But I don’t think people in general are made aware of some of these details before they register. So that’s a third problem.

It refers to the glossary:

https://www.organdonor.gov/about/facts-terms/terms.html#b

Brain Death — Brain death occurs when the brain is totally and irreversibly non-functional. Brain death is caused by not enough blood supply of oxygen which causes the brain cells to die.

Circulatory Death — Occurs when a person’s heart stops and cannot be resuscitated. Just like brain death, there is no recovery from circulatory death (also known as cardiac death).

So, again, those definitions don’t seem scientific to me at all. They are assumptions based on a set of medical doctrines about how the system sees the human being. And the biggest problem is not going to be contrary beliefs but contrary experiences and facts. So if people involved in these things can add up the contrary experiences and suspect that maybe this process rushes the declarations of death too prematurely–then there is a big problem. Instead of turning off the artificial support to test for brain death, maybe they could or should leave it turned on continually and use more neutral tests–and include the one that people expect which is missing (EEG–see last post) and decide to leave the body alone–without restraints–for a much longer period before testing again.

I think people should be concerned about the possibility that the system around deceased donations is in error if there is some chance of people reviving to experience being trapped and having their organs removed. At least people should be more aware of what the process is so they can decide and have input on how it is conducted.

I think there is a border that is being crossed where things become very murky. And the system is already trying to clarify things its own way by legalizing euthanasia recently in Canada and expanding the law even further–so it has been promoted as something acceptable to people for all sorts of reasons (I referred to an article earlier relating organ donation and euthanasia–see the last post also). The use of medically assisted suicide or euthanasia contradicts the contrary value that medicine is meant to keep people alive and heal people.

Continued: Part 5