Mission & Justice

Gene Emery; 14/8/08

Doctors who waited just 75 seconds after the final heartbeat before removing the hearts of dying newborns for transplants said they improved their odds of success but have also raised ethical questions about organ harvesting. The cases of two children who died between May 2004 and May 2007, and a third in which doctors waited three minutes, are detailed in a report and a series of commentaries in the New England Journal of Medicine. The technique is controversial because the waiting time recommended by the Institute of Medicine has been five minutes, unless the patient is brain dead. The three babies were not, although all had severe brain damage.

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Mariam Al Hakeem; 13/8/08

Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia Shaikh Abdul Aziz Bin Abdullah Al Shaikh has affirmed that removal of respirators from brain-dead people and babies born with disability is not permissible since their hearts beat naturally. Addressing a meeting of senior doctors in Taif city, he also said that it is prohibited to force prisoners sentenced to death to donate their organs and treat as brain-dead persons. “It is right to execute them, but there is no right to cut a part of their organs,” he explained. “It is wrong to take some parts of the body of a person sentenced to death and then carry out the death penalty on him. This is not permissible,” he added.

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