Organs of euthanasia victims are being 'harvested for transplant surgery in Belgium'

"I am in favor of palliative medicine in circumstances where someone is terminally ill... I'm mindful of the legitimate interests of states to prevent a slide from palliative treatments into euthanasia. On the other hand, I think that the people of Oregon did a service for the country in recognizing that as the population gets older we've got to think about issues of end-of-life care."
Barack Obama, in March of 2008, praising voters in Oregon who voted in favor of legalizing physician-assisted suicide [i.e. euthanasia]

From the Daily Mail:

The organs of people killed by euthanasia in Belgium are being harvested for transplant surgery, a report revealed yesterday.

A quarter of all lung transplants in Belgium are from people killed by lethal injection.

The study, led by Dirk van Raemdonck a surgeon from Leuven, found doctors preferred lungs taken from those who die through euthanasia as they are in a far superior condition to those from people killed in accidents.

The paper showed about 23.5 per cent of lung transplant donors and 2.8 per cent of heart transplant donors are killed by euthanasia.

Mr Van Raemdonck insisted doctors were acting within Belgian guidelines on euthanasia, which was legalised in 2002.

All of the donors [SUPPOSEDLY] had given their consent...

The report comes just a year after researchers found a high proportion of deaths classified as euthanasia in Belgium have involved patients who have not requested their lives to be ended by a doctor.

A fifth of nurses interviewed by researchers from the Canadian Medical Association Journal admitted that they had been involved in the euthanasia of a patient - but also found that nearly half of these – 120 of 248 - admitted to particpating in ‘terminations without request or consent’...

"I think that the people of Oregon did a service for the country in recognizing that as the population gets older we've got to think about issues of end-of-life care."
Barack Obama, in March of 2008, praising voters in Oregon who voted in favor of legalizing physician-assisted suicide [i.e. euthanasia]

"I actually think that the tougher issue around medical care... is what you do around things like end-of-life care... I mean, the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care bill out here!"
President Obama in an interview with the New York Times - April 2009