Heart Transplants Hit by LSU Medical Dean

              AIE SHREVEPORT TIMES Thursday, Oct. 8, 1970
'Morally Unjustified'
Heart Transplants Hit
By LSU Medical Dean
By Ellen Molloy
Times Religion Writer
Dr. Edgar Hull said here
yesterday that he believes heart
transplants are morally unjusti-fied
and kidney transplants in
humans should have been de-layed
at least eight years.
Dr. Hull, dean of the Louisia-na
State University School of
Medicme-Shreyeport, s p o k e
briefly to ministers Irom a wide
area of the Ark-La-Tex at a
clinical pastoral training ses-sion
at Schumpert Hospital.
Chaplain Lowell C. Todd of
the Veterans Administration
Hospital was the principal
speaker. He said most religions
hold that God creates life and
should have supreme mastery
of it. However, he said treat-ment
and decisions of physi-cians
do sometimes determine
life or death.
Kidney transplants are now
fairly successful, but then-records
were miserable 15
years ago, Dr. hull said. He
added that experimentation in
Kidney transplants should have
been done in laboratories and
not on humans and that humans
should not be used in heart
transplant experiments.
The Rev. Mr. Todd said the
day nas passed when cessation
of heartbeat or respiration is
reason enough to pronounce
death, although this still is a
definition accepted by law.
Brain Is Indicator
Many medical scientists now;
believe that the definition of
death shouid be cessation of
brain activity, he said. New
criteria for death are needed
and most doctors think the
determination of death should
be a medical decision and not
made by law, Chaplain Todd
explained.
Dr. Hull said that when life
ends is not important unless
transplants are involved. He
agreed with Chaplain Todd that
"no persons should take the life
of another," and also that
measures should not be taken to
prolong life after the "odds
are 10,000 to 1 that the patient
would be a vegetable if he
lived."
"When does the soul leave the
body? Is turning off the respira-tor
murder?" Chaplain Todd
asked. He said doctors have to
do some soul searching in
terminal illnesses .and there are
so many variables, rigid rules
are impossible.
He said it is not for him as
chaplain to tell doctors what to
do for a patient's welfare.
Chaplain Todd said there is a
trend to liberalize laws on
abortion in many states, includ-ing
Arkansas and Texas. He
said one-third of all general
hospital beds in this country are
Catholic, where abortions are
not performed.
They are not the only ones
opposing abortions, he said.
Some hospital administrators
believe a woman should not
take a bed from a patient with
cancer because she wants an
abortion. Abortions also are
still costly, he said.
He told of a young resident
who performed 50 abortions
after New York's new abortion
law.
"When you look down into the
gauze in the operating room
and see the little hands there,
you think, I've just killed
something. It's awful," the
resident was quoted as saying.
Different Views
Chaplain Todd said Roman
Catholics believe that the soul
is infused immediately at the
moment of conception. Protes-tant
views differ and sometimes
are totally opposite, he said.
"Human life begins with the
fertilization of the egg from a
woman's ovary," Dr. Hull de-|
blared. He said that soon after
fertilization the zygote is
formed and in this cell all genes
are formed which make each
person different from any oth-er.
He said there is an epidemic
of abortions even where laws
have not been changed. He said
abortions are "baby killings
and are awful." Dr. Hull said
things morally wrong have bad
practical consequences in the
long run and here are many
rxamples. "A doctor is a
snuffer-outer-of-life when he
performs an abortion," he said.
"Some say morality can't be
legislated, but most laws are
based on morality such as the
Ten Commandments, including
'Thou shalt not kill."
Dr. Hull said both abortion
and euthanasia, or mercy kill-ngs,
destroy the traditional
image of the physician as the
protector of life doing his best
to restore health.