To Be or Not To Be

            My article was about a man in Ohio by the name of Ronald Phillips, who raped and killed his girlfriend’s three year old daughter and now has asked to be able to donate his organs to ill family members. This article was conflicting, to say the least. On one hand, you’re thinking that guy did something really bad and he was literally a day away from dying so maybe he’s just trying to get more time. And if that’s the case, he gets another 230 days to live. And on the other hand, you’re thinking maybe this is a good thing. He knows his fate, and he’s not trying to change it. But he is trying to alter it. Maybe this is his way of helping some people out if he can.

            I think it’s easy for us, as third party people, to judge. I think it’s easy for us to say, “Hey, he committed a crime and now he’s paying for it”. But it’s also easy for us to be sympathetic. I’m pretty sure that it’s in our human nature. We may not feel bad for his punishment because he did a very bad thing, but the fact that he wants to save a life or two is a nice thing to do. Whether or not it’s for his personal gain, we’ll probably never know.

            However, not only is this request something that causes a lot of thought, it also causes a lot of investigation. It’s important to look at the facts behind the situation. While reading the article, Arthur Caplan, a professor at NYU Langone Medical Center said that “the only options for executing someone to obtain vital organs is to either shoot them in the head or chop their head off…” (Silva and Connor). Talk about graphic. There is, however, another option. Organs can be removed from his body while he is under anesthesia. This option is a lot less graphic. And it sounds a lot less complicated. Right? Wrong.

The issue with this seemingly-simple third option is that it is completely unethical. You’d basically be killing someone while they’re still alive. It’s not like harvesting organs from a drunk driver or saving lives because someone accidentally hit a tree. His brain would still be functioning, and he would still be alive. When someone has suffered a traumatic brain injury and they become nonresponsive, do you know the way that doctors determine the outcome? Brain activity. They do something called an EEG, which stands for electroencephalogram. Basically, this measures the voltage in a person’s brain and determines whether or not someone is brain dead. So, if someone is put under an anesthetic, they’re just asleep. They’re still breathing, they’re still functioning on their own, they’re still living.

The largest problem with this third option is that for a doctor to perform this type of surgery, harvesting organs out of a live human being, would be unethical. It was said in the article, and I will restate the fact, there is no doctor that would do this. While organ donation is a good thing, the way that this would be done would be against everything a doctor stands for. This doctor would not be harvesting organs out of someone who is brain dead. They would be taking them from someone who is still alive. In the end, they may be a part in saving a life, but they would also be taking one.

This man could not donate his organs if he was electrocuted or lethally injected because it would damage his organs. This man could not be put under anesthesia and donate his organs because it would be unethical. This man could not be shot in the head or have his head chopped off because that’s just inhumane. But who knows if he would even be a good candidate for organ donation? Caplan also said that “because of diet, lack of exercise and the high-rate of drug-related diseases such as HIV and hepatitis” the organs that were donated could be low-quality. So there’s people sitting around going over this man’s final plea and thinking of all these possibilities to get his organs out of his body in an ethical and humane way when they might not even be viable.

Ultimately, the governor of Ohio is going to have to make a decision. Whether it’s in 200 days or 20 days, he’s going to have to make a choice. He’s going to have to look at all the information and study all the facts, and whether or not he takes any of that into consideration, he’s going to have to make a choice. Lucky Phillips. He gets 230 more days than he did before while the governor and all other people involved get to sit around and decide whether to let him be or not to be. An organ donor, that is.