The world's ancient, sacred texts say nothing about organ donation, of course. But that doesn't mean there aren't modern interpretations of what's encouraged and what's forbidden. Organ donation, as medical students at the University of Utah learned this week, is about religion as well as surgery. Interpretations depend largely on beliefs about body and soul.
No religion says "thou shalt donate," as Indra Neelameggham of West Jordan's Hindu temple noted. But the spectrum of belief includes the Catholic Church's encouragement of organ donation as "an act of charity," as Sister Bridget Clare of the Salt Lake Catholic Diocese explained, and the Muslim prohibition about donating organs after death.
Donation during the donor's lifetime — of a kidney, for example — is permitted according to Islamic teachings. But donations after death aren't permitted because Muslims believe "the body must be given back to God as it was given to us," explained Shuaib Din, imam of the Khadeeja Mosque in West Valley City.
Din and Neelameggham were two of nine representatives from seven religions who took part in a panel sponsored by the medical school's Students for Organ Donation. According to Robin Ninefeldt, the group's president, the aim was to help students become more "culturally aware" of the needs of their future patients.
Although Muslims prohibit donating an organ after death, they leave it up to each individual to decide whether to accept organs from other people who have died, Din said.
"The body is a temporal gift," said Methodist minister Gary Perryman of Christ United Methodist Church. "So we have no problem with giving and receiving organs." Hindus, too, encourage organ donation, believing that in a subsequent lifetime we get another body and therefore should share the current one, after death, with someone who needs it. In India, said Neelameggham, people sometimes sell their organs to black markets in other countries.
Hindus cremate their dead. The Baha'i, on the other hand, believe a body must be buried, and specify that it must be within one hour's journey from the place of death. The one hour can be by foot, car or plane, said pediatrician and Baha'i follower Atoosa Kourosh. Or space shuttle, she added. Donated organs, on the other hand, can go anywhere, as long as the body is treated with respect. There is no official Baha'i policy about organ donation, but the faith believes in a life of service, she said, so Baha'i are receptive to donating parts of their body.
Jehovah's Witnesses don't condone blood transfusions but do allow organ donations, according to ministers Carl Wickbom and Harry Diamond, who are both members of their faith's hospital liaison committee. It's an individual decision for Witnesses whether to accept donated organs and tissue, just as it's up to each individual to decide whether he will accept blood "fractions" such as albumin.
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