Woman has organs harvested following assisted suicide in world first

A woman in Australia has become the first person in the world to have their organs harvested after ending their life by assisted suicide.

Karen Duncan, from Victoria, Australia, ended her life by assisted suicide after being diagnosed with motor neurone disease in August 2024. It is reported that Ms Duncan began having conversations about ending her life by assisted suicide with her family and doctors shortly after her diagnosis.

In Victoria, an individual can end their life by assisted suicide or euthanasia if they have been given a prognosis of 12 months. This follows a significant expansion of the law in Victoria in October last year, in which the prognosis required for eligibility in most cases of assisted suicide or euthanasia was doubled, from six months to 12 months...

Ms Duncan’s case was the first known instance of someone donating organs after ending their life by assisted suicide, though organs have previously been harvested from those who have ended their lives by euthanasia. Euthanasia is the intentional ending of another person’s life for their supposed benefit, while assisted suicide is the act of assisting another person in ending their own life.

It is reported that, with assisted suicide, the process of dying is slower due to the cause of death being the oral ingestion of a fatal drug, rather than the intravenous injection used for euthanasia. This increased length of time had sparked fears that organ function would deteriorate too much before the transplant could happen. Ms Duncan died 39 minutes after ingesting the fatal drug, yet her lungs, kidneys, heart valve, and eye tissue were able to be donated.