Infant Organ Transplants

As chair of the Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs of the American Medical Assn., I was somewhat amazed at the headline given Dr. Katherine Dowling’s Commentary contribution (“Slaughtering Babies, Ethically,” Jan. 10). It would seem to me that the title might better have been “Saving Babies, Ethically,” at least that was the goal of the council in June 1994.

Dowling failed to comment on the numbers of infants born with vital organs that are incapable of sustaining life who are dying because of the lack of donors of life-saving transplants or as Dowling prefers, “body parts.”

The reasons given by Dowling for the council’s suspending its opinion on organ donations from anencephalics were not totally accurate. The emergence of a “host of other humans at risk for dismemberment” from this opinion is a fragile argument at best, and was rejected by the council. The comments from the neurological community on the true level of consciousness carried the most influence on our decision.

Dowling failed to give any details of our opinion. Only a correctly diagnosed anencephalic (which incidentally was not made in the dramatic case of the infant with a brain cyst observed during her training) could be a candidate. More importantly, the whole process had to be initiated by the parents seeking to salvage some good from this tragedy.

Needless to say the council has demonstrated its desire to respond to reasoned thinking on this position. We have challenged the scientific community to do further investigations into the level of consciousness which may be present in the true anencephalic.

CHARLES W. PLOWS MD

Santa Ana

* I disagree with Dowling. As a mother of two children with a third on the way, I think that the decision of whether to donate the organs of anencephalic babies should be left to the parents.

Anencephalic babies are doomed, plain and simple, and from what I have read most do not live more than minutes, hours or maybe days after birth, if they are born alive. Donating the organs of these babies is not “cannibalization,” it is simply making the best of a bad situation.

I have long since decided that if I were unlucky enough to have an anencephalic baby, I would want to donate its organs. It is hard enough to lose a child, and this would help me to find some meaning in tragedy. It would be a comfort for me to know that my baby, who was not destined to have a chance of its own, was able to give the chance of life to other babies.

ALISON S. MIZRAJI

Oxnard