Reply #217: The kidney did die. The doctor didn't exclaim it because that wasn't the purpose.

[Jim Lane]

My analogy is better because in chemotherapy, as in abortion, the purpose of the procedure is to kill living cells that are in the patient's body. It wouldn't have been at all silly for my oncologist to exclaim, "We've killed his tumor!"

I just Googled the phrase "kill cancer cells" and got more than five million hits, such as headlined "Scientists use salmonella bug to kill cancer cells." The point is that use of the word "kill" does not imply that the person doing the killing is the moral equivalent of a murderer.

If you Google "kill kidney" you get some hits for killing kidney stones. That's consistent with the distinction I suggested.