A Bioethical Analysis of Death and Organ Donation-Transplantation: Medical, Metaphysical, and Biophilosophical Considerations

[GCTG]

Herewith I invite you to participate in the lectures & discussions of the course „A Bioethical Analysis of Death and Organ Donation-Transplantation: Medical, Metaphysical, and Biophilosophical Considerations“ of Doyen Nguyen, OP, M.D, S.T.D. at the Academy for Philosophy and Theology (APT)
at the Gustav-Siewerth-Akademie - state-approved private scientific institute of higher education (https://kurse.aemaet.de) See the lecture overview below.

A Bioethical Analysis of Death and Organ Donation-Transplantation: Medical, Metaphysical, and Biophilosophical Considerations

Why should the general public, especially Catholics, be actively engaged in the issue of Death and Organ Donation? One can easily say: “the issue is of no concern to me, it does not touch my personal life.” In reality, this is an issue which does touch every human person. The reason is rather simple: anybody can find him- or herself in the unfortunate situation of being either: (i) a comatose patient who, according to today’s new medical paradigms of death (namely, brain death and controlled cardiac circulatory death), is considered as a potential organ-donor by health professionals, or (ii) a close family member of one such comatose patient.

Life and death are ontological realities standing at opposite ends to one another; yet they are tightly intertwined with each other in organ donation-transplantation. This is why St. Pope John Paul II once stated, “it is conceivable that in order to escape certain and imminent death a patient may need to receive an organ which could be provided by another patient, who may be lying next to him in hospital, but about whose death there still remains some doubt.”

Much of the general public has remained largely uninformed about the real nature of the new medical paradigms of death. They have raised considerable controversies within academic circles, however. At the heart of the ongoing debates is the unsettling question: are donors truly dead when they are declared dead (whether according to the brain death or the controlled cardiac/circulatory death protocol); are they truly dead at the time of the removal of their organs?

This course is specifically designed to answer the above question, by using a multidisciplinary approach to the bioethical investigation of Death and Organ Donation.

Course Lecturer

Bio

Doyen Nguyen, OP, M.D, S.T.D. is both a moral theologian and an academic hematopathologist. A graduate of Temple University Medical School (Philadelpha, USA) and a scholar of the Leopold Schepp Foundation, she is a lay Dominican who, in addition to having worked (and taught medical residents) at various university medical centers, was also a professor of theology at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum) in Rome (Italy) where she obtained her doctorate in moral theology, with a special focus on end-of-life ethics. She has authored books and articles both in medicine and in moral theology/bioethics. Among her recent publications is the 600-page monograph The New Definitions of Death for Organ Donation: A Multidisciplinary Analysis from the Perspective of Christian Ethics (Peter Lang, April 2018. ISBN 978-3-0343-3277-4).

Death and Organ Donation: How Did We Arrive at the Current Situation? (2)...

Course Overview

1. What is Bioethics? Why Catholics Must Be Involved in Bioethical Issues

2. Death and Organ Donation: How Did We Arrive at the Current Situation? Paradigm Shifts in the Medical Definition of Death (Brain Death, Controlled Cardiac/Circulatory Death)

3. How to Argue against Advocates of Brain Death: Critical Analysis of pro-Brain Death Arguments (Part I)

4. How to Argue against Advocates of Brain Death: Critical Analysis of pro-Brain Death Arguments (Part II)

5. How to Argue against Advocates of Controlled Cardiac/Circulatory Death: Ethical problems in Controlled Cardiac/Circulatory Death for Organ Donation

6. The Anthropological Premise of the New Paradigms of Death

7. Confronting the New Paradigms of Death with Aristotelian-Thomistic Metaphysical Anthropology (Part I)

8. Confronting the New Paradigms of Death with Aristotelian-Thomistic Metaphysical Anthropology (Part II)

9. Confronting the New Paradigms of Death with Contemporary Holistic Biophilosophy

10. The Catholic Church and Brain Death (Part I): Did John Paul II Fully Endorse Brain Death?

11. The Catholic Church and Brain Death (Part II)

12. The Catholic Church and Brain Death (Part III): The Incoherence of the pro-Life, pro-Brain Death Position

13. Concluding Remarks: How to Return to an Authentic Culture of Life in the Context of Organ Donation-Transplantation

[Herausgeber]

Academy for Philosophy and Theology (APT)

at the Gustav-Siewerth-Akademie - state-approved private scientific institute of higher education

Objectives of the APT

Our study & further education offer is aimed at all those who, according to Edmund Husserl’s maxim „back to the things themselves“, are interested in truth and reality in a realistic sense. Realism assumes that things, reality, and objective truth exist independently of the thinking human being. We are therefore scientifically searching for answers to the great philosophical questions concerning man, the world, and God (in the sense of Kant’s four basic questions „What can I know?“). - „What should I do?“ - „What can I hope for?“ „What is man?“ (Cf. Kant, Logik, Einleitung, Ak 25)). It is therefore not about doxography or the history of philosophy, but about systematic research and argumentation, which is also open to „ultimate justifications“.

As far as philosophy is concerned, the APT is in the tradition of the Philosophia perennis but is not bound to any particular philosophical school of thought. Theologically, the APT is Christian / Catholic-traditional. The APT wants to set accents in matters of apologetics and new evangelisation.

Simply register by mail: bexten[a]pm.me

Organization and Method

We offer lectures, seminars, and disputations in small groups via video conference and learning platform. One hour of lectures and Q&R are offered per course in each study week. The courses can be accessed via our learning platform. Anyone interested can participate in two events without obligation and free of charge. Individual tutorials can also be offered on request. Every interested person can create an academy for philosophy Moodle account and enroll in a course of his choice. All courses are held by lecturers with a doctorate in philosophy and can be certified after proof of performance.

Proof of performance: The APT awards APT credit points as proof of performance. Each credit corresponds to approximately 30 working hours of an average student. For example, writing and submitting a 3000-word essay within two weeks will be rewarded with 3 credits. A certain number of APT credits are necessary to obtain a certificate at the end of a course.

Conditions of participation: Up to 100 participants can attend a course free of charge and without obligation during the first three weeks. After that the course fee for all participants is 250€. This allows participation in an offered course or lecture series. With the live participation in the lectures, the course participants agree to the subsequent video publication of the lecture and discussion e.g. via YouTube and also to the commercial use of the video recordings by APT. A course certificate can be acquired for 100€ upon request after the proof of performance (this can also include an oral examination).

[Herausgeber]

Doyen Nguyen. ‚Brain Death,‘ Organ Donation, and Presumed Consent. Consent Cannot Be Presumed because ‚Brain Death‘ Is Not True Death. Aemaet Bd. 8, Nr. 1 (2019) 1-66.

[Herausgeber]

Josef Seifert: “Brain Death” is neither Human Death nor its Sign – An Answer to Condic, Lee, Moschella and other Defenders of Brain Death Definitions and Criteria of Human Death (249-358).