Face of euthanized woman transplanted to another patient

(National Review) — Euthanasia conjoined with organ harvesting just took a particularly disturbing turn in Spain, where a woman was euthanized and then had part of her face transplanted. From the Catalan News story:

Vall d’Hebron University Hospital in Barcelona has performed the world’s first face transplant with a donor who passed away from euthanasia.[...]

Around 100 medical professionals took part in the partial face transplant, a highly complex operation using neurovascular microsurgery techniques that lasted about 24 hours.

In presenting the milestone procedure, the healthcare director, Maria José Abadías, highlighted the “extraordinary generosity of the donor,” ​the “collective effort” behind the operation and the “pride” of all workers who took part in it.

Don’t get me wrong. There is no inherent moral distinction between donating one’s face or organs after death. Indeed, I support face transplants as a legitimate medical treatment. The recipient in this case certainly benefited:

After suffering necrosis of facial tissues due to a bacterial infection two years ago, she was forced into intensive care. When she came out, she found that she could not eat or breathe properly, eventually resulting in her receiving the transplant.

“Now my life is starting to get a little better,” she explained. “After four months, I can talk, I can eat, I can drink again.”

So, it isn’t the act of transplanting a face per se that gave me the heebie-jeebies. Rather, this case furthers the ongoing commodification of suicidal people who have been accepted for legalized killing. Here’s what I mean:

The euthanasia law in Spain, which came into force in June 2021, opened up a new possibility for transplants.

In the case of this transplant, as the donor had received prior authorization, medical workers could do more planning than usual.

The transplant was also the first in the world in which 3D planning could be done on both the donor and the recipient.

Do you see what happened? There were apparently no efforts at suicide prevention to keep the patient in life.

From what the story discloses, the primary focus of the medical team became the 3-D planning and preparation for the surgery after the killing. (The story does not disclose her ailment.) I see this as a violation of the dead donor rule because the patient was killed at a particular time and in a specific way to further the donation, not to benefit her condition.

In this, I am reminded in this of the Belgian teenager put in a coma by doctor for 36 hours before being euthanized — not to benefit her medically but to find appropriate organ recipients.

Moreover, donating might have been the inducement for the patient asking to be put down. It certainly was for the Belgian girl who chose the timing of her death for the purpose of donating organs.

Finally, gushing stories like that written by the Catalan News reporter serve the purpose of convincing society that euthanasia legalization offers society a utilitarian stake in sick and disabled patients being killed. If they want to die, let’s get all the good we can from their bodies!

And it could give ideas to ill people that everyone would be better off if they were euthanized and harvested. Eventually, that will lead to death by organ harvesting, already being proposed in the world’s most influential medical and bioethics journals.

So, why do I say above that euthanasia and organ harvesting have taken “a particularly disturbing turn?” Perhaps this story had an extra emotional punch for me because our faces are so intimately identified with our individuality. In other words, the killing and harvesting seems more personal when taking a face than when harvesting a liver.

I know that isn’t logical. But I can’t help thinking that in the totality of all of this, Leon Kass’s cautionary maxim is more relevant than ever: “Shallow are the souls that have forgotten how to shudder.”