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Daily Deals
Andrea Schwartz (00:03)
Welcome to Out of the Question, a podcast that looks behind some common questions and uncovers the question behind the question while providing real solutions for biblical world and life view. Your host is Andrea Schwartz, a teacher and mentor and founder of the Chalcedon Teacher Training Institute. One of the things I like to do is to bring back guests who have previously been on this podcast to get updates on the subject the matter they’ve covered. Back in November of 2022, I had Dr. Heidi Klesig, an anesthesiologist, to discuss the realities of organ transplantation. And then the following year, 2023, she returned to describe in detail the manufactured diagnosis of brain death that makes organ transplantation possible. She’s back with us today to share some recent developments regarding the subjects she’s previously addressed. Just this past week, she attended in Washington, DC, the Integrity in the Determination of Brain Death Symposium. This was a Catholic conference sponsored by National Catholic Bioethics Center, the Pellegrino Center for Clinical Bioethics, and the Center for Law and the Human Person at the Catholic University of America. It was attended by doctors, nurses, lawyers, philosophers, and clergy. There were presentations on the philosophical basis, or lack thereof, for brain death, the new American Academy of Neurology, Brain Death Guideline, Whether informed consent is needed for apnea testing the struggles of nurses as they care for a living person one moment and have to immediately switch to caring for organs the next when a brain death diagnosis is declared, the question of conscience protection Corrections for those who disagree, and the legal status of brain death nationally and at the state level.
Andrea Schwartz (02:07)
Now, that’s a lot of things covered, but thankfully, Heidi can help unpack it. So thanks for coming back to the podcast. Last, Heidi.
Dr. Heidi Klesig (02:15)
Oh, thank you so much, Andrea, and I appreciate the opportunity. There’s been so much going on in this discussion, this debate about brain death since we spoke last. So I’ll try to bring us up to speed a little bit. I think when I spoke to you last, we were talking about how the diagnosis of brain death really was established without any data. In 1968, the Ad hoc Committee of the Harvard Medical School put out a paper proposing this idea that we could simply declare certain neurologically disabled people in a coma to be dead already. But they had no tests, they had no studies, they had no evidence for this. The only real prospective multi-center study was performed two years afterward in 1970. And the result of that study was that they were unable to find any way to declare someone dead before cardiac arrest, which is, of course, the traditional means that we determine someone is dead. And they determined that brain death was actually a prognosis of impending death, but wasn’t a diagnosis of death itself.
Andrea Schwartz (03:29)
Okay, so let me Let me stop you for a second and ask, prior to this time, let’s go back the early part of the 20th century. There didn’t seem to be a need for a diagnosis of brain death. Why did this diagnosis end up being something useful and for whom?
Dr. Heidi Klesig (03:49)
Interestingly, the Ad-Hoc Committee put it right out in black and white in their landmark article in the Journal of the American Medical Association. They had a utilitarian reasons. They said these people’s lives were a burden to themselves and to others. Secondly, they said that declaring them to be dead would free up ICU beds, and it would facilitate organ donation. And in fact, organ donation and the desired for more and more organs has really driven this. Dr. Elko Vedex, who was a neurologist at Mayo Clinic and an author of the 1995 2010 and 2023, American Academy of Neurology, Brain Death Guidelines, stated in 2006 that what is driving the diagnosis of brain death, in fact, is organs. He went on to say that the idea of brain death would not have much, if any, meaning if it were not for the sake of transplantation.
Andrea Schwartz (04:53)
Okay. So growing up, of course, I was born in the mid ’50s, so this was already being put out there in terms of the wonders of organ transplantation, we heard the term the person’s a vegetable. It just always irritated me because what vegetable? Lettuce, spinach? What vegetable are we talking about. And you’d hear people when they were discombobulated or frustrated, going, I’m just so brain dead today. Did that help this process of getting brain death acknowledged as real death because this was in the media, in stories, et cetera?
Dr. Heidi Klesig (05:33)
Did you just think about a vegetable and how dehumanizing that is? And the use of dehumanizing language in this debate has been key. We use dehumanizing language, usually to aid us in removing people’s human rights. So when we speak of someone as brain dead, a vegetable, it’s like saying the unborn child is a clump of cells. We use this to remove their humanity and the human rights protections that that entails. So you’re quite right about the language being a big problem here.
Andrea Schwartz (06:11)
So you start off by saying, Tremendous things are happening in a positive direction, and having just come from this symposium, why don’t you share some of those wins?
Dr. Heidi Klesig (06:22)
Sure. So because an increasing number of people are recognizing that my loved one who has been declared brain dead appears in no way dead. In fact, my loved one looks just like every other ICU patient that’s getting better. They’re warm, their heart is beating, they have excellent oxygen saturation on the monitors. Everything looks fine. But the neurologists have done a very small series of tests and have made this declaration. And so people have been challenging brain death diagnosis in of law. And in 2015, a woman named Aiden Halou, her father did not believe his daughter was dead and took this all the way to the Nevada Supreme Court. The Nevada Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the American Academy of Neurology, Brain Death Guideline, did not meet the legal definition of brain death under the Uniform Determination of Death Act. Excuse me. So because of this increasing number of high-profile lawsuits, a group of people who were calling themselves, and I hate this term, the brain death stakeholders, proposed changing US law. And so rather than encouraging doctors to follow the law, their aim was to make the law align with the American Academy of Neurology, Brain Death Guideline.
Dr. Heidi Klesig (07:50)
So they petition the Uniform Law Commission to change the law. The Uniform Law Commission is a group of lawyers and judges who volunteer our time to write model laws that can be adopted across the United States because we’d like our laws to be fairly uniform, especially when we’re trying to determine who is dead and who is not. It’s quite awkward if you’re dead in Maryland, but not dead in Idaho, right? Right. They’re trying to make it uniform. But after several years of study and debate, the Uniform Law Commission was unable to achieve consensus and actually tabled its work on revising the Uniform Uniform Determination of Death Act in September of 2023. But just three weeks following that, the American Academy of Neurology released a new brain death guideline, which essentially recapitulated the proposals refused by the Uniform Law Commission. And the big problem with the new guideline is they came out and said explicitly that people with ongoing partial brain function may be declared dead. Now, that’s a problem, to have it very explicitly written that when you’re brain dead, your brain might still be working a little bit. This had became very upsetting to Catholic health care.
Dr. Heidi Klesig (09:11)
The National Catholic Bioethics Center put out a position paper the following spring in 2024 calling this new guideline, and I quote, A decisive breakdown in the public consensus on death and organ donation. And this is because the new guideline allows allows people to be declared brain dead while they still have ongoing brain function.
Andrea Schwartz (09:35)
Now, just for a second, I want to go back to high school biology because I didn’t do a lot of further study. Maybe I took a class in college. I don’t remember. But the brain has to be working still if the heart is beating because there’s a portion of the brain that controls all those things. So are they just looking at cognitive parts of the brain to declare someone brain said, because how would the heart keep beating? How would circulation keep happening if there wasn’t some aspect? I think it’s the medula part of the brain that governs that. Maybe you can correct me.
Dr. Heidi Klesig (10:11)
Sure. This is why this is a difficult topic, because the idea of brain death is a very contrived medical diagnosis. They’re only looking at certain parts, and they’re totally ignoring others, as you mentioned. The heart actually has an internal pacemaker hearter automatically within it. So the heart will beat on its own. It’s the breathing that you’re thinking of, Andrea, that will stop when the medula, as you mentioned, is being compressed. So these people generally have a spontaneously beating heart because it has that automatic internal pacemaker. But most of them are going to be on a ventilator because they’re not able to generate breaths on their own at this point in the time of their care. Now, with continuing care, it has been shown that many of them do respond and improve. But so often, they’re not given the time for that because of the great hurry to make them organ donors.
Andrea Schwartz (11:10)
So there seems to be a very utilitarian approach to this, just the same way, and you mentioned abortion. If you tell a woman, You all, you have to stop your higher education. This will be a burden. So it’s like, what’s best for you? I imagine a lot of people get convinced that doing donation for their comatose relative is the good thing because think of all the other people who will live. But just like an abortion, we’re not really considering the baby. And in this, we’re not considering the patient who isn’t dead.
Dr. Heidi Klesig (11:42)
That’s correct. And I tell people whenever I speak, and I need to emphasize this, we have so much knowledge, and we have to make so many decisions every day. There’s not any way possible that we can individually We research every decision we make. We have to take a lot on authority. And whereas in the scientific journals, doctors, scientists, lawyers, philosophers have been hotly debating the brain death concept for years, the public is never informed and is simply told, give the gift of life, be an altruistic citizen. And they’re not told that behind the scenes, this is certainly not settled science, to use that term. So I don’t fault anybody who, in the goodness of their heart, gave a loved one to become an organ donor. I don’t fault anyone who believed what they were told, that this organ came from a dead person and received an organ. I don’t fault even doctors and nurses, because most of them are just going with what they’ve been taught. They’re given so much information in their training. They can’t possibly research at all. So again, I myself, in my early part of my career, I was part of an organ procurement, even though in my gut, it just seemed so wrong.
Dr. Heidi Klesig (13:04)
I went along because my authorities were telling me that this was the right thing to do. So I don’t fault anybody for having acted in the goodness of their heart on the information they had available at the time. But now we have better information, and that’s where I see what my role would be. I’m trying to communicate to people that this is something that, morally, we cannot count on.
Andrea Schwartz (13:28)
And it’s interesting because like so many things, people are not willing to give up what they’ve accepted as true. I can’t remember when I started on social media, but it’s been a while, and I saw a video of a doctor explaining, he was an older gentleman, I don’t even remember his name, you probably know who he is, talking about what happens in an organ procurement situation. I posted it, and Heidi, I got hate mail or hate responses or hate comments like, who do I think I them. Then in some cases, people whose relative was alive now because of a transplant were saying, Oh, you think my father should be dead or you think this should be that? Suddenly, it all became in terms of, how do I feel about this? Well, after having talked with you twice already, on your site, you have this card that you can print out saying, I refuse to be a organ donor. I put that in call it, and it goes everywhere with me. And then there are people who are saying, Well, that’s how selfish of you to not want to give somebody else life. Well, let’s say for whatever reason my organs are taken and I’m still alive and whatever, I have no problem with my destination because as a believer, I know I stand before the throne of God.
Andrea Schwartz (14:53)
That’s next step. But we also need to be concerned for people who will subsequently find out what the circumstances were when they got their transplant. So that it’s not a selfish thing. It’s that you want God’s law to be followed, whether you’re the recipient or on the other side of it. And so I think that’s why Christians need to look at this as the next area. Most Christians will say abortion is wrong, et cetera, but this needs to be viewed in terms of, are we taking image bearers of God and deciding we’re going to cut them up and use them for profit?
Dr. Heidi Klesig (15:34)
The word of God emphasizes that we are to care for the vulnerable, and these donors are not dead. I would say if you’ve received an organ, you did the best you could with the information you had, we’re happy that you’re alive. We cherish your life. But I think in a funny way, there would probably be more organs available for people with organ failure if we were truthful about this. I know a man personally who turned down multiple offers of organs from family and friends because he didn’t want to trouble or put at any risk his family members, because in his mind, he thought he could get an organ from a dead person. And later, when he found out the facts, he was terribly troubled. He believes his conscience was violated by people who deceived him, frankly, into taking an organ from someone that he now knows lost their life during that organ procurement.
Andrea Schwartz (16:33)
Just to be clear, when you said he had family and friends who offered, not every organ donation means the end of the life of the donor.
Dr. Heidi Klesig (16:43)
So any organ except the heart can be given by a donor who stays alive after the procedure. And so if you need a kidney, you can take a kidney from a living donor. A liver, they give a lobe of the liver. If you need a lung, fascinating Interestingly, they take a lobe from each of two different donors and put one of each of two different donors, lobe of lung in you. There’s a lot of ways to do this in an ethical manner, and you don’t even have to be related. A nurse that I worked with at the Cain Clinic, received a kidney from an anonymous living donor who just felt that she wanted to do this for an unknown person, which is in the best tradition of selfless sacrifices and service. So there are good ways to do this. And I’m here to tell you, as far as the heart is concerned, there is currently in clinical trials a totally implantable artificial heart, which would be wonderful because it, of course, doesn’t involve the death of a neurologically disabled person in order to procure it. And you wouldn’t need any immune suppression if you took that thing.
Dr. Heidi Klesig (17:51)
So there’s a lot of good things on the horizon. I really think if we had been pouring our money research-wise into ethical options, we would have many good things by now that we’re just missing because we’re sticking with the current unethical system.
Andrea Schwartz (18:05)
So interestingly enough, Heidi, this morning, I have various people around the country who will send me articles. And there was this article about a man who I believe was comatose with a drug overdose. I think this is a number of years ago, you probably know the case, where they were harvesting what organs of his would still be valuable, considering he had been a drug user. I imagine they’re some that aren’t, but that he woke up during the procurement procedure. He opened his eyes. The interesting part about the article was that the medical profession was saying, Oh, this was just a one-off. Oh, I see. Just a one-off. And then they were very distressed, the authors of the article, at least who they were quoting, that information like this might discourage people from being organ donors. Well, once you find out that you can wake up, wake up from what? Being dead? No, wake up from being called dead when you aren’t dead.
Dr. Heidi Klesig (19:08)
Yes. I think that sounds like the recent TJ Hoover case. And TJ Hoover was able to dance at his sister’s wedding in the subsequent year. He was in no way dead. I mean, none of these people are dead, but some of them are capable of recovery. And thankfully, TJ Hoover was one of them. The very concerning thing about the TJ Hoover ever case is that there was such a mindset of the people around him that he was dead, that he was going to become an organ donor, even though multiple doctors, nurses, finally, even some of the organ procurement team were saying, Wait, this man is moving. He’s crying. We have to do something here. There were those who were so brainwashed, I guess, is what I’d have to say, that they’re like, Just find another doctor to do it. And that is the problem. When we have a fixed opinion, even evidence sometimes falls on blind eyes.
Andrea Schwartz (20:04)
Is it true that the procurement team are usually not people from that particular hospital? That somebody at the hospital or maybe an A defense person from a procurement team comes in and says, Yes, this person’s brain dead. But it’s not usually hospital staff where the patient was that actually harvest the organs.
Dr. Heidi Klesig (20:25)
For ethical reasons, people do try to keep some separation between your doctor and then the organs doctor. So it’s actually by law, as a doctor or nurse, you’re not allowed to talk to the patient about donation. That has to be either someone from the organ procurement organization or someone delegated by the organ procurement organization to do that. And so they usually are a separate team because your own doctor, you want that doctor to be full in for your care. You don’t want a doctor who’s sizing you up as to how many organs that you amount to. You want to keep some separation.
Andrea Schwartz (21:10)
I see. So as a result of being at this symposium, and I also know that you were a presenter there, tell us what the aftermath is. Have people’s minds been changed?
Dr. Heidi Klesig (21:22)
Well, this is the wonderful thing. And I had a large number of people praying for this conference, and As I talk to your listeners, the one thing that I would encourage you is when you are going into a battle like this, which it has a spiritual component. And we just talked about how people can be very blinded by their presuppositions. Prayer is such an important part. In the months coming up to the symposium, I recruited people to help me, and I myself, every morning, every evening, I prayed for that conference. I I prayed that I would be able to declare the truth in love. I prayed that I would have the tongue of the learned. I prayed that I would have great depth of insight and perspicuity of thoughts so that I could communicate well. And it was amazing to see God work. The other thing I prayed about was I prayed by name for those who were going to be on the other side of the podium that have a different view. I took those men and women, and I would every morning, every night, pray for them by name that God would open their eyes, that he would change their hearts.
Dr. Heidi Klesig (22:31)
I prayed for the audience that would be hearing. Also, Dr. Joe Morecraft, that Andrea and I were talking about earlier, he and his wife, Becky, he emphasizes the importance of praying through the Psalms, and those involve some imprecatory prayers. So whereas I never would pray for anyone by name in that way, God says that we should pray that the councils of those who oppose should be put to confusion. And so I prayed that, too. And so as we look at the results of this conference, I can only say that it was a matter of prayer. And so I was able to speak about AAN, Brain Death Guideline being unacceptable. There was a doctor there saying that we should keep the status quo in that guideline. There was a doctor that was saying we should have that guideline and adding a few more tests. There were two doctors who spoke on the philosophy of brain death. One saying that philosophically this makes no sense and the other saying it did. But I really have to put it down to the power of prayer in addition to the power of the facts that I was able to present.
Dr. Heidi Klesig (23:41)
And interestingly, the poll of the audience prior to our discussion, the majority was in favor of keeping the American Academy of Neurology Brain Death Guidelines. The exit polling after we spoke showed that now a majority felt that the guidelines are untrustworthy, which is a wonderful thing.
Andrea Schwartz (24:04)
So this actually, I’m glad we got a chance to talk about the background because it’s good to get the update. But really what I wanted to talk to you about was staying in the fight. I imagine there have been times long term, short term, where you feel like you’re not progressing, that success isn’t happening. I would say a David and Goliath moment, except Goliath went down with some stones. Your stones take a little bit longer and have to be accumulated. How do you keep going? In other words, it seems so momentous or monumental, I should say, that there are other doctors with degrees and backing from prestigious institutions. What’s a little old girl like Heidi going to do to change any of this?
Dr. Heidi Klesig (24:56)
I ask the Lord that very question very frequently. I did not set out to do this. I had the experience I had during my training, and I would talk to people as they came into my sphere of influence, but they were always so very interested, and they would want to know more. It was really a providential set of circumstances. I wrote a letter to the editor to Jeff Pollard’s magazine, and he put me in touch with another author, and we wrote a book. And then I was asked to speak at a medical conference, and in my preparation for that, I thought, I’m reading all the literature. Why don’t I write another book? And then people ask me to come and speak, and then they tell their associates, and this just seems to continue to blossom. So God really has put us together, and I’m just along for the ride, really. But it’s been a thrilling journey. And one of the things that I’d like to encourage your listeners with is something, again, that Pastor Morekraft said I heard in a sermon a while ago. He said, After salvation and true conversion, as your heart and mind are being really converted to think the Lord’s thoughts after him, he said, The rest of our lives are a grand adventure of seeing God keep his promises.
Dr. Heidi Klesig (26:15)
And so that is the most encouraging thing in the world. And I’m here to testify, I’m seeing it happen. And so, yes, there will be setbacks. I mean, yes, little David dropped the giant, but his problems were by no means over at that point, as we all know. So we have to just keep on with the journey, and we have to be patient. My biggest problem is I like to push. I want to do the next thing. I want to do the next thing. And really, I have had to learn to wait and let God open the door, and then I will walk through it.
Andrea Schwartz (26:46)
Romans 8: 28 is a favorite verse among many, that God works all things together for the good. I’m guessing, and you can tell me if this is true, when you first realized what you had been involved in, I imagine there was plenty of shame and guilt, like what did I participate in? But God has turned it for the good, not because you go around self-flagellating, I’m terrible, I’m terrible, but you accept forgiveness and you realize, as Dr. Morekraft says, that’s the starting point. In other words, without that background, could you do the work God had intended for you to do? I think it’s important for people to remember because we’re It’s supposed to walk by faith, not by sight. Had you walked by sight, I don’t think we’d be talking today.
Dr. Heidi Klesig (27:36)
That’s right. And really, those hard things in our past, God can use them for good. And in fact, I I had to, I had to repent. I had to go to the Lord in faith and find him faithful in forgiveness. And so this also gives me a platform to share the gospel with people because all of us have made mistakes. All of us have done things we regret, but I’m able share the hope of Jesus Christ as part of this ministry, and that’s a beautiful thing.
Andrea Schwartz (28:06)
And I think that it might be a normal response to make it us versus them. But the very fact that you prayed for the people who you know would do their best to articulately oppose you really goes back to the idea that the message of the gospel is reconciliation, not we win and you lose. Saul, the Pharisee, to Paul, the Apostle, is a great example of that. And so instead of coming out, not that we wouldn’t be direct and forceful and use truth as our weapon, but we don’t have to hate the people who are currently opposing us, do you?
Dr. Heidi Klesig (28:47)
There was a great article just on Cal Ceden’s website about reconciliation that I found tremendously helpful. And really, I always think everyone I meet is a potential insider. They’re not my enemy. Everyone could change their heart and mind through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. If you think of everyone you meet as a potential insider, it changes your viewpoint.
Andrea Schwartz (29:11)
And while it’s probably true that there is tremendous money to be made in this whole process, especially because I don’t know the percentages of transplants that actually work, but the people along the way all get paid. Yes, it could be true that people are in it just for the money. But as you’re learning, there are people who are there principally, and they need to have their hearts and minds changed. So maybe it’s true. Follow the money, follow the money. And that would give you things to investigate But that’s not the endpoint for a Christian, is it?
Dr. Heidi Klesig (29:47)
No. It’s quite true that the last numbers I have in 2020, the transplant industry was a $48 billion industry in the United States alone. But I really don’t I think that’s most of it. I really think this is something that people were taught, that doctors and nurses were taught, and they accepted it on the basis of authority and on the basis of majority. Everyone’s going along with it. But of course, as you know, majority and authority are both logical fallacies. Beyond that, there really is a lot of fear. If I question the brain death diagnosis, now I have to come to grips with the fact that for how many years of my career where I have been participating in the medical homicide, I’d have to say, of people who deserve my care and protection. And that’s hard to come to grips with, right? And also, if I do question this paradigm, I could lose my job. And that’s also very difficult. There was a doctor who spoke at the conference, and he advocated. He said, I really think we should be giving people better informed consent about this. And a questioner raised his hand and said, Well, couldn’t you just tell your patients you think this is unethical?
Dr. Heidi Klesig (31:04)
And the man said, I wish I could. I’d lose my job. I mean, that was the implication. So there is such a spirit of fear. And in Christ, we cannot have a spirit of fear. We’re given a spirit of power and love in a sound mind. And we have to serve the Lord first and not have a fear of man.
Andrea Schwartz (31:23)
I’m thinking, in fact, that this is your area. This is the area where God uniquely prepared you. Well, there are a lot of areas right now where you have Christians really working hard to educate people and try to bring them back to biblical foundations. I’m thinking about abolitionist movement for abortion. Biblical cosmology, when people want to say, let’s look at what the Bible says, those who are opposed to the slew of vaccine or the transgender things or even child trafficking. At first, there’s a lot of mocking that goes on and making you feel as though you’re in such a minority. But isn’t it true that you plus the Lord is a majority? Isn’t that how you look at it?
Dr. Heidi Klesig (32:08)
I mean, that’s right. If you look at it with the long view of eternity, these light momentary kerfuffles are nothing. And yes, at the conference, there was a doctor who… He was quite upset with me, and he kept making remarks about, well, the minority position. But I like it when I get somebody like that upset, because when someone gets mad, I can tell that that person has heard me. The message has penetrated and has been understood. And I think getting mad is a totally appropriate response. I mean, I was mad when I figured out what I had done. I think it’s the right way to feel. And so when someone gets angry, if you get that angry response like you did, Andrea, when you showed that video, that’s not a loss. I think of that as a win because that person is going to think about it later and may come to some change of mind.
Andrea Schwartz (33:13)
I think that happens in so many story is that I remember talking to somebody about the abortion issue, and she was troubled. And eventually she came to me and said, I have to make a confession. I said, What’s that? She said, Well, I had an abortion years ago. I said, Well, why are you confessing that to me? Have you confessed to the Lord? And she said, Yes. And I said, I hope you’ve had used this as an opportunity to share this with your daughters. And she said, Oh, no, no, I could never share it with my daughters that I had had an abortion. I don’t want them to think that that was okay. And it was like she missed the point. She had been saved from something that, aside from the fact that we’re all born at war with God, but she took a life. But if you don’t share the forgiveness, if you don’t share it, I like what you said, when you see somebody who’s a bit irked by what you’re doing, intensify your prayers that God will continue to make that person uncomfortable, because we all know we only change our minds when we realize that it’s not us.
Andrea Schwartz (34:15)
It’s what God’s word has to say on the subject.
Dr. Heidi Klesig (34:19)
That’s right. And really, how could God show himself faithful if everything went smoothly? These are the opportunities for God to show himself strong and be glorified.
Andrea Schwartz (34:30)
So what would your encouragement be to anybody, and not necessarily just in this arena, because we have big discussions now about in vitro fertilization, and we have big discussions on the right place, tax dollars to go, and all this or that, regardless of the fight that someone’s in, and it is a fight, how would you encourage them to keep doing what they’re doing, seeking God, and just wait for the success?
Dr. Heidi Klesig (34:58)
God has given all of us something to do. And believe it or not, the brain death battle that I’m in is not my primary job. My primary job is wife and mother. And I would love some of these full-time doctors who were at the conference where I was speaking to take this over from me because this actually is a distraction from my full-time job. Look at what you’re doing and do it with all your heart. If you’re a wife and mother, you are creating a home and raising a family that will go through all eternity praising the Lord. That is a huge responsibility. Seek the Lord and do it with all your heart. When your children are out of the house, like mine, if God lays on your heart something that you could contribute to, just be open to it. Pray and ask him to open the doors and show you the way, and he will be faithful to do that.
Andrea Schwartz (35:55)
Yes. And I can say that’s true in my case and many others that we both know. All right. Before we go, you mentioned you’d authored two books, so I’d like you to share those titles. And then also, if people want to stay up on what’s happening in this whole arena, websites or ways in which they can get informed or even contact you.
Dr. Heidi Klesig (36:16)
Sure. The two books, the first one I wrote with a nurse whose name is Christopher Bogaj, and it’s called Harvesting Organs and Cherishing Life: What Christians need to know about Organ Donation and Procurement. And then the second book is called The Brain Death Fallacy, which is a little bit more technical. If you’re a doctor or a nurse, this would have the citations and the footnotes that you would want. But honestly, it’s not too hard. I have a 95-year-old woman in our church who read it, and she didn’t think it was too difficult. So that would be the brain death fallacy. If you look at our website or on Amazon, you can find the books. The website is a really nice resource. If you want to find information about all kinds of different ethical issues of transplantation. That’s respectforhumanlife. Com is where you find that. And be sure to put the word human in there or you won’t get us. Respectforhumanlife. Com. You can find our new video series on that. I’ve just done a series, the first of eight. I’ve done three short videos, which are all less than 10 minutes long, and they’re meant for sharing with your loved ones to help them understand the brain death concept, what is this new type of donation after circulatory death.
Dr. Heidi Klesig (37:33)
There’s also a new type of transplant procedure called NRP, where they actually clamp off the carotid arteries to your brain and then resuscitate your organs. It’s a horrifying thing, but it is being done right now. And so those first three are available. I have three videos coming out on tissue donation, whole body donation, and xenotransplantation, which is using animal organs. And then we have a couple coming out wrap up. I’m also on X if you want to follow at Heidi Klesig-Mde.
Andrea Schwartz (38:05)
Okay. I think for a lot of people, this is going to be, I don’t know enough about this and go ahead and explore it. I have found that when you’re in casual conversation, and currently, I know someone who is an anesthesiologist, and as we’ve had discussions, I’ve discovered was participating the same way that you had. Rather than coming out gangbusters and saying, That’s wrong, and the natural thing would be, Well, excuse me, are you a doctor? I’m really glad that you have resources for lay people and then some that would have greater impact on professionals, because a lot of times, and you hear this all the time from doctors, whether it’s this or nutrition, a lot of times they don’t know the current advancements that have taken place. Just to hear what you had to say about a mechanical heart that would have no issues with rejection because anybody who knows anything about transplantation knows that people are on immune suppressant drugs for the rest of their life. So even those who want to go into medical research and whatever, these are the areas that Christians can really participate in because it has to do with life, not with death.
Dr. Heidi Klesig (39:25)
I look forward to the time when we can 3D print all our replacement where it’s from our own cells. The research field is wide open, and so we do have a lot of hope.
Andrea Schwartz (39:37)
All right. Well, very good. Well, Heidi, thank you so much. Hopefully, I’ll have you back again sometime, and you can tell us of greater strides that the Lord has allowed to be made in this area.
Dr. Heidi Klesig (39:47)
Amen. Thank you, Andrea.
Andrea Schwartz (39:48)
All right. Outofthequestionpodcast@gmail.com is how you reach us, and we’ll talk to you next time. Thanks for listening to Out of the Question. For more information and other topics, please visit Chalcedon.edu.
335 episodes
Out of the Question Podcast: Uncovering the Question Behind the Question
Andrea Schwartz (00:03)
Welcome to Out of the Question, a podcast that looks behind some common questions and uncovers the question behind the question while providing real solutions for biblical world and life view. Your host is Andrea Schwartz, a teacher and mentor and founder of the Chalcedon Teacher Training Institute. One of the things I like to do is to bring back guests who have previously been on this podcast to get updates on the subject the matter they’ve covered. Back in November of 2022, I had Dr. Heidi Klesig, an anesthesiologist, to discuss the realities of organ transplantation. And then the following year, 2023, she returned to describe in detail the manufactured diagnosis of brain death that makes organ transplantation possible. She’s back with us today to share some recent developments regarding the subjects she’s previously addressed. Just this past week, she attended in Washington, DC, the Integrity in the Determination of Brain Death Symposium. This was a Catholic conference sponsored by National Catholic Bioethics Center, the Pellegrino Center for Clinical Bioethics, and the Center for Law and the Human Person at the Catholic University of America. It was attended by doctors, nurses, lawyers, philosophers, and clergy. There were presentations on the philosophical basis, or lack thereof, for brain death, the new American Academy of Neurology, Brain Death Guideline, Whether informed consent is needed for apnea testing the struggles of nurses as they care for a living person one moment and have to immediately switch to caring for organs the next when a brain death diagnosis is declared, the question of conscience protection Corrections for those who disagree, and the legal status of brain death nationally and at the state level.
Andrea Schwartz (02:07)
Now, that’s a lot of things covered, but thankfully, Heidi can help unpack it. So thanks for coming back to the podcast. Last, Heidi.
Dr. Heidi Klesig (02:15)
Oh, thank you so much, Andrea, and I appreciate the opportunity. There’s been so much going on in this discussion, this debate about brain death since we spoke last. So I’ll try to bring us up to speed a little bit. I think when I spoke to you last, we were talking about how the diagnosis of brain death really was established without any data. In 1968, the Ad hoc Committee of the Harvard Medical School put out a paper proposing this idea that we could simply declare certain neurologically disabled people in a coma to be dead already. But they had no tests, they had no studies, they had no evidence for this. The only real prospective multi-center study was performed two years afterward in 1970. And the result of that study was that they were unable to find any way to declare someone dead before cardiac arrest, which is, of course, the traditional means that we determine someone is dead. And they determined that brain death was actually a prognosis of impending death, but wasn’t a diagnosis of death itself.
Andrea Schwartz (03:29)
Okay, so let me Let me stop you for a second and ask, prior to this time, let’s go back the early part of the 20th century. There didn’t seem to be a need for a diagnosis of brain death. Why did this diagnosis end up being something useful and for whom?
Dr. Heidi Klesig (03:49)
Interestingly, the Ad-Hoc Committee put it right out in black and white in their landmark article in the Journal of the American Medical Association. They had a utilitarian reasons. They said these people’s lives were a burden to themselves and to others. Secondly, they said that declaring them to be dead would free up ICU beds, and it would facilitate organ donation. And in fact, organ donation and the desired for more and more organs has really driven this. Dr. Elko Vedex, who was a neurologist at Mayo Clinic and an author of the 1995 2010 and 2023, American Academy of Neurology, Brain Death Guidelines, stated in 2006 that what is driving the diagnosis of brain death, in fact, is organs. He went on to say that the idea of brain death would not have much, if any, meaning if it were not for the sake of transplantation.
Andrea Schwartz (04:53)
Okay. So growing up, of course, I was born in the mid ’50s, so this was already being put out there in terms of the wonders of organ transplantation, we heard the term the person’s a vegetable. It just always irritated me because what vegetable? Lettuce, spinach? What vegetable are we talking about. And you’d hear people when they were discombobulated or frustrated, going, I’m just so brain dead today. Did that help this process of getting brain death acknowledged as real death because this was in the media, in stories, et cetera?
Dr. Heidi Klesig (05:33)
Did you just think about a vegetable and how dehumanizing that is? And the use of dehumanizing language in this debate has been key. We use dehumanizing language, usually to aid us in removing people’s human rights. So when we speak of someone as brain dead, a vegetable, it’s like saying the unborn child is a clump of cells. We use this to remove their humanity and the human rights protections that that entails. So you’re quite right about the language being a big problem here.
Andrea Schwartz (06:11)
So you start off by saying, Tremendous things are happening in a positive direction, and having just come from this symposium, why don’t you share some of those wins?
Dr. Heidi Klesig (06:22)
Sure. So because an increasing number of people are recognizing that my loved one who has been declared brain dead appears in no way dead. In fact, my loved one looks just like every other ICU patient that’s getting better. They’re warm, their heart is beating, they have excellent oxygen saturation on the monitors. Everything looks fine. But the neurologists have done a very small series of tests and have made this declaration. And so people have been challenging brain death diagnosis in of law. And in 2015, a woman named Aiden Halou, her father did not believe his daughter was dead and took this all the way to the Nevada Supreme Court. The Nevada Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the American Academy of Neurology, Brain Death Guideline, did not meet the legal definition of brain death under the Uniform Determination of Death Act. Excuse me. So because of this increasing number of high-profile lawsuits, a group of people who were calling themselves, and I hate this term, the brain death stakeholders, proposed changing US law. And so rather than encouraging doctors to follow the law, their aim was to make the law align with the American Academy of Neurology, Brain Death Guideline.
Dr. Heidi Klesig (07:50)
So they petition the Uniform Law Commission to change the law. The Uniform Law Commission is a group of lawyers and judges who volunteer our time to write model laws that can be adopted across the United States because we’d like our laws to be fairly uniform, especially when we’re trying to determine who is dead and who is not. It’s quite awkward if you’re dead in Maryland, but not dead in Idaho, right? Right. They’re trying to make it uniform. But after several years of study and debate, the Uniform Law Commission was unable to achieve consensus and actually tabled its work on revising the Uniform Uniform Determination of Death Act in September of 2023. But just three weeks following that, the American Academy of Neurology released a new brain death guideline, which essentially recapitulated the proposals refused by the Uniform Law Commission. And the big problem with the new guideline is they came out and said explicitly that people with ongoing partial brain function may be declared dead. Now, that’s a problem, to have it very explicitly written that when you’re brain dead, your brain might still be working a little bit. This had became very upsetting to Catholic health care.
Dr. Heidi Klesig (09:11)
The National Catholic Bioethics Center put out a position paper the following spring in 2024 calling this new guideline, and I quote, A decisive breakdown in the public consensus on death and organ donation. And this is because the new guideline allows allows people to be declared brain dead while they still have ongoing brain function.
Andrea Schwartz (09:35)
Now, just for a second, I want to go back to high school biology because I didn’t do a lot of further study. Maybe I took a class in college. I don’t remember. But the brain has to be working still if the heart is beating because there’s a portion of the brain that controls all those things. So are they just looking at cognitive parts of the brain to declare someone brain said, because how would the heart keep beating? How would circulation keep happening if there wasn’t some aspect? I think it’s the medula part of the brain that governs that. Maybe you can correct me.
Dr. Heidi Klesig (10:11)
Sure. This is why this is a difficult topic, because the idea of brain death is a very contrived medical diagnosis. They’re only looking at certain parts, and they’re totally ignoring others, as you mentioned. The heart actually has an internal pacemaker hearter automatically within it. So the heart will beat on its own. It’s the breathing that you’re thinking of, Andrea, that will stop when the medula, as you mentioned, is being compressed. So these people generally have a spontaneously beating heart because it has that automatic internal pacemaker. But most of them are going to be on a ventilator because they’re not able to generate breaths on their own at this point in the time of their care. Now, with continuing care, it has been shown that many of them do respond and improve. But so often, they’re not given the time for that because of the great hurry to make them organ donors.
Andrea Schwartz (11:10)
So there seems to be a very utilitarian approach to this, just the same way, and you mentioned abortion. If you tell a woman, You all, you have to stop your higher education. This will be a burden. So it’s like, what’s best for you? I imagine a lot of people get convinced that doing donation for their comatose relative is the good thing because think of all the other people who will live. But just like an abortion, we’re not really considering the baby. And in this, we’re not considering the patient who isn’t dead.
Dr. Heidi Klesig (11:42)
That’s correct. And I tell people whenever I speak, and I need to emphasize this, we have so much knowledge, and we have to make so many decisions every day. There’s not any way possible that we can individually We research every decision we make. We have to take a lot on authority. And whereas in the scientific journals, doctors, scientists, lawyers, philosophers have been hotly debating the brain death concept for years, the public is never informed and is simply told, give the gift of life, be an altruistic citizen. And they’re not told that behind the scenes, this is certainly not settled science, to use that term. So I don’t fault anybody who, in the goodness of their heart, gave a loved one to become an organ donor. I don’t fault anyone who believed what they were told, that this organ came from a dead person and received an organ. I don’t fault even doctors and nurses, because most of them are just going with what they’ve been taught. They’re given so much information in their training. They can’t possibly research at all. So again, I myself, in my early part of my career, I was part of an organ procurement, even though in my gut, it just seemed so wrong.
Dr. Heidi Klesig (13:04)
I went along because my authorities were telling me that this was the right thing to do. So I don’t fault anybody for having acted in the goodness of their heart on the information they had available at the time. But now we have better information, and that’s where I see what my role would be. I’m trying to communicate to people that this is something that, morally, we cannot count on.
Andrea Schwartz (13:28)
And it’s interesting because like so many things, people are not willing to give up what they’ve accepted as true. I can’t remember when I started on social media, but it’s been a while, and I saw a video of a doctor explaining, he was an older gentleman, I don’t even remember his name, you probably know who he is, talking about what happens in an organ procurement situation. I posted it, and Heidi, I got hate mail or hate responses or hate comments like, who do I think I them. Then in some cases, people whose relative was alive now because of a transplant were saying, Oh, you think my father should be dead or you think this should be that? Suddenly, it all became in terms of, how do I feel about this? Well, after having talked with you twice already, on your site, you have this card that you can print out saying, I refuse to be a organ donor. I put that in call it, and it goes everywhere with me. And then there are people who are saying, Well, that’s how selfish of you to not want to give somebody else life. Well, let’s say for whatever reason my organs are taken and I’m still alive and whatever, I have no problem with my destination because as a believer, I know I stand before the throne of God.
Andrea Schwartz (14:53)
That’s next step. But we also need to be concerned for people who will subsequently find out what the circumstances were when they got their transplant. So that it’s not a selfish thing. It’s that you want God’s law to be followed, whether you’re the recipient or on the other side of it. And so I think that’s why Christians need to look at this as the next area. Most Christians will say abortion is wrong, et cetera, but this needs to be viewed in terms of, are we taking image bearers of God and deciding we’re going to cut them up and use them for profit?
Dr. Heidi Klesig (15:34)
The word of God emphasizes that we are to care for the vulnerable, and these donors are not dead. I would say if you’ve received an organ, you did the best you could with the information you had, we’re happy that you’re alive. We cherish your life. But I think in a funny way, there would probably be more organs available for people with organ failure if we were truthful about this. I know a man personally who turned down multiple offers of organs from family and friends because he didn’t want to trouble or put at any risk his family members, because in his mind, he thought he could get an organ from a dead person. And later, when he found out the facts, he was terribly troubled. He believes his conscience was violated by people who deceived him, frankly, into taking an organ from someone that he now knows lost their life during that organ procurement.
Andrea Schwartz (16:33)
Just to be clear, when you said he had family and friends who offered, not every organ donation means the end of the life of the donor.
Dr. Heidi Klesig (16:43)
So any organ except the heart can be given by a donor who stays alive after the procedure. And so if you need a kidney, you can take a kidney from a living donor. A liver, they give a lobe of the liver. If you need a lung, fascinating Interestingly, they take a lobe from each of two different donors and put one of each of two different donors, lobe of lung in you. There’s a lot of ways to do this in an ethical manner, and you don’t even have to be related. A nurse that I worked with at the Cain Clinic, received a kidney from an anonymous living donor who just felt that she wanted to do this for an unknown person, which is in the best tradition of selfless sacrifices and service. So there are good ways to do this. And I’m here to tell you, as far as the heart is concerned, there is currently in clinical trials a totally implantable artificial heart, which would be wonderful because it, of course, doesn’t involve the death of a neurologically disabled person in order to procure it. And you wouldn’t need any immune suppression if you took that thing.
Dr. Heidi Klesig (17:51)
So there’s a lot of good things on the horizon. I really think if we had been pouring our money research-wise into ethical options, we would have many good things by now that we’re just missing because we’re sticking with the current unethical system.
Andrea Schwartz (18:05)
So interestingly enough, Heidi, this morning, I have various people around the country who will send me articles. And there was this article about a man who I believe was comatose with a drug overdose. I think this is a number of years ago, you probably know the case, where they were harvesting what organs of his would still be valuable, considering he had been a drug user. I imagine they’re some that aren’t, but that he woke up during the procurement procedure. He opened his eyes. The interesting part about the article was that the medical profession was saying, Oh, this was just a one-off. Oh, I see. Just a one-off. And then they were very distressed, the authors of the article, at least who they were quoting, that information like this might discourage people from being organ donors. Well, once you find out that you can wake up, wake up from what? Being dead? No, wake up from being called dead when you aren’t dead.
Dr. Heidi Klesig (19:08)
Yes. I think that sounds like the recent TJ Hoover case. And TJ Hoover was able to dance at his sister’s wedding in the subsequent year. He was in no way dead. I mean, none of these people are dead, but some of them are capable of recovery. And thankfully, TJ Hoover was one of them. The very concerning thing about the TJ Hoover ever case is that there was such a mindset of the people around him that he was dead, that he was going to become an organ donor, even though multiple doctors, nurses, finally, even some of the organ procurement team were saying, Wait, this man is moving. He’s crying. We have to do something here. There were those who were so brainwashed, I guess, is what I’d have to say, that they’re like, Just find another doctor to do it. And that is the problem. When we have a fixed opinion, even evidence sometimes falls on blind eyes.
Andrea Schwartz (20:04)
Is it true that the procurement team are usually not people from that particular hospital? That somebody at the hospital or maybe an A defense person from a procurement team comes in and says, Yes, this person’s brain dead. But it’s not usually hospital staff where the patient was that actually harvest the organs.
Dr. Heidi Klesig (20:25)
For ethical reasons, people do try to keep some separation between your doctor and then the organs doctor. So it’s actually by law, as a doctor or nurse, you’re not allowed to talk to the patient about donation. That has to be either someone from the organ procurement organization or someone delegated by the organ procurement organization to do that. And so they usually are a separate team because your own doctor, you want that doctor to be full in for your care. You don’t want a doctor who’s sizing you up as to how many organs that you amount to. You want to keep some separation.
Andrea Schwartz (21:10)
I see. So as a result of being at this symposium, and I also know that you were a presenter there, tell us what the aftermath is. Have people’s minds been changed?
Dr. Heidi Klesig (21:22)
Well, this is the wonderful thing. And I had a large number of people praying for this conference, and As I talk to your listeners, the one thing that I would encourage you is when you are going into a battle like this, which it has a spiritual component. And we just talked about how people can be very blinded by their presuppositions. Prayer is such an important part. In the months coming up to the symposium, I recruited people to help me, and I myself, every morning, every evening, I prayed for that conference. I I prayed that I would be able to declare the truth in love. I prayed that I would have the tongue of the learned. I prayed that I would have great depth of insight and perspicuity of thoughts so that I could communicate well. And it was amazing to see God work. The other thing I prayed about was I prayed by name for those who were going to be on the other side of the podium that have a different view. I took those men and women, and I would every morning, every night, pray for them by name that God would open their eyes, that he would change their hearts.
Dr. Heidi Klesig (22:31)
I prayed for the audience that would be hearing. Also, Dr. Joe Morecraft, that Andrea and I were talking about earlier, he and his wife, Becky, he emphasizes the importance of praying through the Psalms, and those involve some imprecatory prayers. So whereas I never would pray for anyone by name in that way, God says that we should pray that the councils of those who oppose should be put to confusion. And so I prayed that, too. And so as we look at the results of this conference, I can only say that it was a matter of prayer. And so I was able to speak about AAN, Brain Death Guideline being unacceptable. There was a doctor there saying that we should keep the status quo in that guideline. There was a doctor that was saying we should have that guideline and adding a few more tests. There were two doctors who spoke on the philosophy of brain death. One saying that philosophically this makes no sense and the other saying it did. But I really have to put it down to the power of prayer in addition to the power of the facts that I was able to present.
Dr. Heidi Klesig (23:41)
And interestingly, the poll of the audience prior to our discussion, the majority was in favor of keeping the American Academy of Neurology Brain Death Guidelines. The exit polling after we spoke showed that now a majority felt that the guidelines are untrustworthy, which is a wonderful thing.
Andrea Schwartz (24:04)
So this actually, I’m glad we got a chance to talk about the background because it’s good to get the update. But really what I wanted to talk to you about was staying in the fight. I imagine there have been times long term, short term, where you feel like you’re not progressing, that success isn’t happening. I would say a David and Goliath moment, except Goliath went down with some stones. Your stones take a little bit longer and have to be accumulated. How do you keep going? In other words, it seems so momentous or monumental, I should say, that there are other doctors with degrees and backing from prestigious institutions. What’s a little old girl like Heidi going to do to change any of this?
Dr. Heidi Klesig (24:56)
I ask the Lord that very question very frequently. I did not set out to do this. I had the experience I had during my training, and I would talk to people as they came into my sphere of influence, but they were always so very interested, and they would want to know more. It was really a providential set of circumstances. I wrote a letter to the editor to Jeff Pollard’s magazine, and he put me in touch with another author, and we wrote a book. And then I was asked to speak at a medical conference, and in my preparation for that, I thought, I’m reading all the literature. Why don’t I write another book? And then people ask me to come and speak, and then they tell their associates, and this just seems to continue to blossom. So God really has put us together, and I’m just along for the ride, really. But it’s been a thrilling journey. And one of the things that I’d like to encourage your listeners with is something, again, that Pastor Morekraft said I heard in a sermon a while ago. He said, After salvation and true conversion, as your heart and mind are being really converted to think the Lord’s thoughts after him, he said, The rest of our lives are a grand adventure of seeing God keep his promises.
Dr. Heidi Klesig (26:15)
And so that is the most encouraging thing in the world. And I’m here to testify, I’m seeing it happen. And so, yes, there will be setbacks. I mean, yes, little David dropped the giant, but his problems were by no means over at that point, as we all know. So we have to just keep on with the journey, and we have to be patient. My biggest problem is I like to push. I want to do the next thing. I want to do the next thing. And really, I have had to learn to wait and let God open the door, and then I will walk through it.
Andrea Schwartz (26:46)
Romans 8: 28 is a favorite verse among many, that God works all things together for the good. I’m guessing, and you can tell me if this is true, when you first realized what you had been involved in, I imagine there was plenty of shame and guilt, like what did I participate in? But God has turned it for the good, not because you go around self-flagellating, I’m terrible, I’m terrible, but you accept forgiveness and you realize, as Dr. Morekraft says, that’s the starting point. In other words, without that background, could you do the work God had intended for you to do? I think it’s important for people to remember because we’re It’s supposed to walk by faith, not by sight. Had you walked by sight, I don’t think we’d be talking today.
Dr. Heidi Klesig (27:36)
That’s right. And really, those hard things in our past, God can use them for good. And in fact, I I had to, I had to repent. I had to go to the Lord in faith and find him faithful in forgiveness. And so this also gives me a platform to share the gospel with people because all of us have made mistakes. All of us have done things we regret, but I’m able share the hope of Jesus Christ as part of this ministry, and that’s a beautiful thing.
Andrea Schwartz (28:06)
And I think that it might be a normal response to make it us versus them. But the very fact that you prayed for the people who you know would do their best to articulately oppose you really goes back to the idea that the message of the gospel is reconciliation, not we win and you lose. Saul, the Pharisee, to Paul, the Apostle, is a great example of that. And so instead of coming out, not that we wouldn’t be direct and forceful and use truth as our weapon, but we don’t have to hate the people who are currently opposing us, do you?
Dr. Heidi Klesig (28:47)
There was a great article just on Cal Ceden’s website about reconciliation that I found tremendously helpful. And really, I always think everyone I meet is a potential insider. They’re not my enemy. Everyone could change their heart and mind through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. If you think of everyone you meet as a potential insider, it changes your viewpoint.
Andrea Schwartz (29:11)
And while it’s probably true that there is tremendous money to be made in this whole process, especially because I don’t know the percentages of transplants that actually work, but the people along the way all get paid. Yes, it could be true that people are in it just for the money. But as you’re learning, there are people who are there principally, and they need to have their hearts and minds changed. So maybe it’s true. Follow the money, follow the money. And that would give you things to investigate But that’s not the endpoint for a Christian, is it?
Dr. Heidi Klesig (29:47)
No. It’s quite true that the last numbers I have in 2020, the transplant industry was a $48 billion industry in the United States alone. But I really don’t I think that’s most of it. I really think this is something that people were taught, that doctors and nurses were taught, and they accepted it on the basis of authority and on the basis of majority. Everyone’s going along with it. But of course, as you know, majority and authority are both logical fallacies. Beyond that, there really is a lot of fear. If I question the brain death diagnosis, now I have to come to grips with the fact that for how many years of my career where I have been participating in the medical homicide, I’d have to say, of people who deserve my care and protection. And that’s hard to come to grips with, right? And also, if I do question this paradigm, I could lose my job. And that’s also very difficult. There was a doctor who spoke at the conference, and he advocated. He said, I really think we should be giving people better informed consent about this. And a questioner raised his hand and said, Well, couldn’t you just tell your patients you think this is unethical?
Dr. Heidi Klesig (31:04)
And the man said, I wish I could. I’d lose my job. I mean, that was the implication. So there is such a spirit of fear. And in Christ, we cannot have a spirit of fear. We’re given a spirit of power and love in a sound mind. And we have to serve the Lord first and not have a fear of man.
Andrea Schwartz (31:23)
I’m thinking, in fact, that this is your area. This is the area where God uniquely prepared you. Well, there are a lot of areas right now where you have Christians really working hard to educate people and try to bring them back to biblical foundations. I’m thinking about abolitionist movement for abortion. Biblical cosmology, when people want to say, let’s look at what the Bible says, those who are opposed to the slew of vaccine or the transgender things or even child trafficking. At first, there’s a lot of mocking that goes on and making you feel as though you’re in such a minority. But isn’t it true that you plus the Lord is a majority? Isn’t that how you look at it?
Dr. Heidi Klesig (32:08)
I mean, that’s right. If you look at it with the long view of eternity, these light momentary kerfuffles are nothing. And yes, at the conference, there was a doctor who… He was quite upset with me, and he kept making remarks about, well, the minority position. But I like it when I get somebody like that upset, because when someone gets mad, I can tell that that person has heard me. The message has penetrated and has been understood. And I think getting mad is a totally appropriate response. I mean, I was mad when I figured out what I had done. I think it’s the right way to feel. And so when someone gets angry, if you get that angry response like you did, Andrea, when you showed that video, that’s not a loss. I think of that as a win because that person is going to think about it later and may come to some change of mind.
Andrea Schwartz (33:13)
I think that happens in so many story is that I remember talking to somebody about the abortion issue, and she was troubled. And eventually she came to me and said, I have to make a confession. I said, What’s that? She said, Well, I had an abortion years ago. I said, Well, why are you confessing that to me? Have you confessed to the Lord? And she said, Yes. And I said, I hope you’ve had used this as an opportunity to share this with your daughters. And she said, Oh, no, no, I could never share it with my daughters that I had had an abortion. I don’t want them to think that that was okay. And it was like she missed the point. She had been saved from something that, aside from the fact that we’re all born at war with God, but she took a life. But if you don’t share the forgiveness, if you don’t share it, I like what you said, when you see somebody who’s a bit irked by what you’re doing, intensify your prayers that God will continue to make that person uncomfortable, because we all know we only change our minds when we realize that it’s not us.
Andrea Schwartz (34:15)
It’s what God’s word has to say on the subject.
Dr. Heidi Klesig (34:19)
That’s right. And really, how could God show himself faithful if everything went smoothly? These are the opportunities for God to show himself strong and be glorified.
Andrea Schwartz (34:30)
So what would your encouragement be to anybody, and not necessarily just in this arena, because we have big discussions now about in vitro fertilization, and we have big discussions on the right place, tax dollars to go, and all this or that, regardless of the fight that someone’s in, and it is a fight, how would you encourage them to keep doing what they’re doing, seeking God, and just wait for the success?
Dr. Heidi Klesig (34:58)
God has given all of us something to do. And believe it or not, the brain death battle that I’m in is not my primary job. My primary job is wife and mother. And I would love some of these full-time doctors who were at the conference where I was speaking to take this over from me because this actually is a distraction from my full-time job. Look at what you’re doing and do it with all your heart. If you’re a wife and mother, you are creating a home and raising a family that will go through all eternity praising the Lord. That is a huge responsibility. Seek the Lord and do it with all your heart. When your children are out of the house, like mine, if God lays on your heart something that you could contribute to, just be open to it. Pray and ask him to open the doors and show you the way, and he will be faithful to do that.
Andrea Schwartz (35:55)
Yes. And I can say that’s true in my case and many others that we both know. All right. Before we go, you mentioned you’d authored two books, so I’d like you to share those titles. And then also, if people want to stay up on what’s happening in this whole arena, websites or ways in which they can get informed or even contact you.
Dr. Heidi Klesig (36:16)
Sure. The two books, the first one I wrote with a nurse whose name is Christopher Bogaj, and it’s called Harvesting Organs and Cherishing Life: What Christians need to know about Organ Donation and Procurement. And then the second book is called The Brain Death Fallacy, which is a little bit more technical. If you’re a doctor or a nurse, this would have the citations and the footnotes that you would want. But honestly, it’s not too hard. I have a 95-year-old woman in our church who read it, and she didn’t think it was too difficult. So that would be the brain death fallacy. If you look at our website or on Amazon, you can find the books. The website is a really nice resource. If you want to find information about all kinds of different ethical issues of transplantation. That’s respectforhumanlife. Com is where you find that. And be sure to put the word human in there or you won’t get us. Respectforhumanlife. Com. You can find our new video series on that. I’ve just done a series, the first of eight. I’ve done three short videos, which are all less than 10 minutes long, and they’re meant for sharing with your loved ones to help them understand the brain death concept, what is this new type of donation after circulatory death.
Dr. Heidi Klesig (37:33)
There’s also a new type of transplant procedure called NRP, where they actually clamp off the carotid arteries to your brain and then resuscitate your organs. It’s a horrifying thing, but it is being done right now. And so those first three are available. I have three videos coming out on tissue donation, whole body donation, and xenotransplantation, which is using animal organs. And then we have a couple coming out wrap up. I’m also on X if you want to follow at Heidi Klesig-Mde.
Andrea Schwartz (38:05)
Okay. I think for a lot of people, this is going to be, I don’t know enough about this and go ahead and explore it. I have found that when you’re in casual conversation, and currently, I know someone who is an anesthesiologist, and as we’ve had discussions, I’ve discovered was participating the same way that you had. Rather than coming out gangbusters and saying, That’s wrong, and the natural thing would be, Well, excuse me, are you a doctor? I’m really glad that you have resources for lay people and then some that would have greater impact on professionals, because a lot of times, and you hear this all the time from doctors, whether it’s this or nutrition, a lot of times they don’t know the current advancements that have taken place. Just to hear what you had to say about a mechanical heart that would have no issues with rejection because anybody who knows anything about transplantation knows that people are on immune suppressant drugs for the rest of their life. So even those who want to go into medical research and whatever, these are the areas that Christians can really participate in because it has to do with life, not with death.
Dr. Heidi Klesig (39:25)
I look forward to the time when we can 3D print all our replacement where it’s from our own cells. The research field is wide open, and so we do have a lot of hope.
Andrea Schwartz (39:37)
All right. Well, very good. Well, Heidi, thank you so much. Hopefully, I’ll have you back again sometime, and you can tell us of greater strides that the Lord has allowed to be made in this area.
Dr. Heidi Klesig (39:47)
Amen. Thank you, Andrea.
Andrea Schwartz (39:48)
All right. Outofthequestionpodcast@gmail.com is how you reach us, and we’ll talk to you next time. Thanks for listening to Out of the Question. For more information and other topics, please visit Chalcedon.edu.
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