There is a proposal in Russia to permit euthanasia. One opponent. a doctor and member of the Duma, warns that legalizing euthanasia would be a way of “seizing organs:” From the story:If a law allowing euthanasia appears in Russia, the risk of criminal seizure of human organs sharply increases, Member of the Russian State Duma, Doctor of Medicine, Russian Academy of Medical Sciences academician Sergey Kolesnikov (United Russia) told a REGNUM correspondent commenting on Senator Valentina Petrenko’s initiative to draft such a law. “I respect Valentina Petrenko very much, but I do not understand what caused the initiative: either by willingness to draw attention or by some other reasons. I strongly oppose legalization of euthanasia. Corruption and crime rates in this country make me take such initiatives very seriously. So, it will become one of legal ways to seize property of an individual, depending on how the procedure is stated by the law,” Kolesnikov believes. “It is no secret that there is a practice of signing contracts with elderly people on using their organs after their death. In this case it would be legal,” he said.
Interestingly, we don’t have the same level of corruption, but some—and not just Jack Kevorkian,but mainstream bioethicists—here have suggested coupling euthanasia/assisted suicide with organ procurement. This isn’t being done, as far as I can tell.
In this regard, it is also worth noting that, despite trying, I have found no evidence that euthanasia and organ harvesting are coupled in the Netherlands. On the other hand, I am not sure the question has ever been formally studied.
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