
( HorizonPost.com) – A retired OB-GYN, who has been an outspoken advocate against euthanasia and the legal definition of “brain death,” last week claimed that God did not intend for people to donate their organs for transplants.
Dr. Paul Byrne, who has spent years campaigning against the accepted definition of brain death, claimed in an interview on the podcast of The John-Henry Westen Show, that brain death was an “invented” term.
He argued that there was no scientific basis for claiming that people become brain-dead and said nobody should be declared dead until the cells begin to break down and the soul leaves the body.
The Uniform Determination of Death Act, which was adopted in the 1980s, defined death as an “irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain.”
However, Byrne is among a small group of medical activists who reject the definition.
It is his rejection of the concept of brain death that has made Dr. Byrne an opponent of organ transplants. He told John-Henry Westen that God formed each person’s organs specifically for them and as such, they should not be transplanted into another person.
Byrne claimed that organ transplants went against God’s plan and noted that those who receive transplants must remain on medication for the rest of their lives to prevent rejection and possible infection.
He claimed that transplanting organs is immoral because doctors take the life of a patient to remove the organs.
Byrne also claimed that one of the reasons the concept of brain death was “invented” was to justify removing organs from people who were still breathing.
Most neurologists and medical ethicists reject Byrne’s extreme position.
In an interview with NPR earlier this year, Dr. David Greer, the head of neurology at Boston University’s medical school, said those declared brain dead have no hope of “regaining consciousness or brainstem function,” adding that refusing to call them “brain dead” accomplished nothing.
Harvard bioethics professor Robert Truog told NPR that there has never been a single case of someone who was “correctly diagnosed as brain dead” recovering “any degree of consciousness.”
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