DATE: Monday, November 10, 1997             TAG: 9711070013

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: B11  EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Opinion 

SOURCE: Ann Sjoerdsma 

                                            LENGTH:   92 lines

WHEN SPARE PARTS ADD UP TO LITTLE RESPECT FOR THE WHOLE WHILE THE DMV SEEMS TO BE OFFERING US A CHANCE TO BE GOOD SAMARITANS, DR. KEVORKIAN IS TELLING US WHAT WE ALREADY FEAR: OUR DEAD BODIES ARE BECOMING COMMODITIES TO BE PICKED OVER. VIOLATED.

The latest tale of love in the '90s hit the news last month. And it reads like Brave New World:

He: Richard McNutt, a charming, handsome, newly divorced (third time), Harvard-educated millionaire of 60, whose kidneys are failing.

She: Dorothy Zauhar, 56, a divorced mother of three and licensed practical nurse, who's swept off her feet by said millionaire.

They meet in 1994. Within six months, they're engaged. But soon McNutt is getting dialysis three times a week, and is desperate for a donor kidney. She offers one of hers. No good.

Then Zauhar's brother, John Dahl, proves a match. He agrees to surgery in exchange for a life insurance policy, $5,000 to cover lost wages, and McNutt's promise that he will always try to make Zauhar happy. The transplant takes place.

But before they've even cleared the hospital driveway, McNutt tells Zauhar that the wedding is off.

The girlfriend that McNutt had on the side sort of puts a damper on the nuptial plans.

Breach of contract?

Sorry. There's no contract because the bargain is illegal. You can't ``buy'' human organs, except perhaps with love (and health insurance). It's a felony under the National Organ Transplant Act of 1984 to accept any ``valuable consideration'' for an organ. It's also bad social policy.

And yet, there can be little doubt that financial arrangements with live organ donors, and maybe with the terminally ill, are made.

If McNutt had not deceived his ``bride-to-be'' and her brother, would his method of obtaining an organ seem so reprehensible?

I'm all for saving lives and advancing medical science, but this case makes me squeamish. It's not the bargain that disturbs me - though I fear the slide down the slippery slope (e.g., brokering for organs) should ``financial incentives'' be legalized. Rather, it's McNutt's attitude.

To him, Dahl is just a spare part. McNutt's kingdom for a kidney!

Actually, his corrupt deal suggests Dickens, rather than Shakespeare. A kidney for a pittance!

In seeking to preserve the body - any body - for the simple sake of preserving it, have we reduced it to just so many cheap spare parts?

Dahl and Zauhur have sued McNutt for ``theft by swindle of a body organ'' and are seeking $150,000.

After 30 years of so-called ``altruistic'' organ donations, there is still a serious organ shortage. Reasons cited for it include people's distrust of the medical community and of the fairness of how organs are allocated (remember Mickey Mantle). Religious/spiritual beliefs sometimes conflict with organ salvaging. And families are often too distraught to consider organ requests after losing a loved one.

In our current times of cloning, in-vitro conceptions, and headless frogs that augur human organ cultivation in a lab, people need a bit more than altruism to prompt them into donating. They need respect. For our bodies, dead or alive.

There are upwards of 35,000 people, at any time, on the United Network of Organ Sharing's waiting list for cadaveric donor kidneys. About one-quarter of them will receive a transplant in a given year. An estimated 3,500 of these will receive kidneys from live donors.

According to the UNOS, there are about 15,000 others waiting for vital organs (heart, liver, lung, heart/lung), less than half of whom will receive transplants.

Each of us can sign a wallet-sized donor card authorizing physicians to remove our organs after death. The Uniform Anatomical Gift Act of 1968, adopted in some form in all 50 states, first made such cards legal. In Virginia and North Carolina, the driver's license serves this purpose.

But we can also belly up to the organ bar that assisted-suicide zealot Jack Kevorkian plans to open. Dr. Death recently announced he will begin making available organs harvested from his ``patients'' on a ``first-come, first-served basis.''

So, while the DMV seems to be offering us a chance to be Good Samaritans, Kevorkian is telling us what we already fear: Our dead bodies are becoming commodities to be picked over. Violated.

Contemplation of our own deaths causes anxiety enough. When guys like Kevorkian preach ``Waste Not, Want Not!'' the prospect of saving life in death seems macabre.

Before the medical community tries to float a plan to establish a national registry of organ and tissue donors, it might consider going back to basics. More than public education about donations is needed. The sanctity of the human body, as a whole, needs to make a comeback. (The ``soul,'' of course, is another confounding matter.)

Such a reaffirmation may not prevent people from being fools for love or from being swindled, but it's a start.

Ann G. Sjoerdsma, an attorney, is an editorial columnist and book editor for The Virginian-Pilot.

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