When are you dead enough to be an organ donor?

Thanks for this - very interesting.

I think this paragraph should also appear in ital:

The reward to the grieving families is the knowledge that otherwise terminally-ill patients suffering from end-stage organ failure can receive a second chance at our most precious commodity — LIFE.

The reward to grieving families is the knowledge they have selflessly provided the body brokers the opportunity to collect hundreds of thousands of dollars of “processing fees” off of the corpse of their loved one.

http://www.lifeissues.net/writers/kat/org_01bodybrokerspart1.html

Odd, it’s a pro-life website but seems to be opposed to organ donation. Perhaps the fundamental issue is with determining the precise time of death? In Utah at least one has the option of choosing precisely what objects one wants to donate, as well as whether they’re for transplant or research purposes.

That website reprinted that article, originally published in the Orange County Register-Guard in California. I don’t think the article is anti-donation, but it does try to reveal the truth about something most people are misinformed about.

Where you’re not only merely dead, you’re really most sincerely dead. :stuck_out_tongue:

(Sorry, couldn’t help meself)

It would be nice to see the original Orange County Register article, but alas I couldn’t find it. I could only find this article on fringe Constitutionalist sites, and on pro-life sites. It’s as if it was passed from place to place.

I can’t tell if this was an editorial, an op-ed piece, a blog entry, or just a letter to the editor, or even if someone was using the Register the the names of reporters to make something someone else wrote look legitimate.

This article won the Gerald Loeb award for journalismin 2001:

The award was presented by the managing editor of the Wall Street Journal. I would say anything vetted by the UCLA School of Management should pass the smell test.

My big problem with organ donation is someone being declared “brain dead” only to recover and go on to live happy lives. Zack Dunlap, Val Thomas are two of many who were declared brain dead yet they recovered, so the doctors were mistaken. People make mistakes and given that we have documented cases of these mistakes from all over the world, and given the time constraints on organ harvesting, odds are doctors have killed people who would have recovered had they not had their organs removed.

Once your doctor has given up on you, you become a pile of parts, if they think your parts are useable, then odds are you will be given drugs to preserve the organs, not the help the patient in anyway and may in fact harm the patient, even if they don’t have permission to harvest.

They send someone from a organ procurement organization, who are sometimes introduce as a grief counselor, who will tell your love ones, how you’d really want some good to come out of this, how (name your religion) approves of this, etc. They have the script down pat, so they’re pressured to give in, and if someone objects, they try to get them to leave so the people left will give in. Heard it, talk to people who had it happen.

In 1996 at least 19 of the nation’s 64 organ procurement organizations now have protocols for obtaining organs from donors who do not meet the criteria for “brain death.” They declare you dead if your heart stops beating for as little as two minuets. A short enough time that your heart could be put into another person and the heart could still be restarted.

In some places if they declare you dead and your organs might be of use, by law they can start the removal process even though they don’t have permission from anyone. In hopes that they might get permission to harvest,

Sorry but given the fact doctors are people and people make mistake and given the pressure for organs, doctors have killed and will kill people for their organs, even if by mistake.

I want nothing to do with it at all. But I also have stated that I refuse a organ if I ever needed one, because I’m don’t want any part of that system.

BTW just because you’re donating you or your loved one organs don’t expect a dime, everyone else will be making a lot of money, except you.

Cecil,

Thank you for your honesty and staightforwardness! That is why I subscribed to begin with. I was more annoyed with Rick R, RN who sounded like a salesman trying to pitch a new computer software; or more like a mortician trying to sell us a casket. Your article made me consider my own organ donor card; and then decided to stay an organ donor. If there is a one-in-a billion chance (or less) that I might miraculously awake from Clinical Brain-Death and a 100% chance that my organs can save someone else; I’m okay with that…

BenH

While I don’t believe your commenter, Rick, was using euphemisms, I also appreciate the straightforwardness of your description. I think Rick’s perspective was slanted in the direction of goodness and closure. Yours was not slanted in any direction – simply “this is what it is.” Can’t ask for more than that when you’ve requested the straight dope. Thank you.

I’ll never be dead enough to be an organ donor. Everything I got is wore out anyway.