Posted on 07/31/2025 6:04:03 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
People die in many ways, but in medicine there are only two reasons a person can be declared dead: Either the heart has stopped or the brain has ceased to function, even if the heart is still beating.
A person may serve as an organ donor only after being declared dead. (Until then, transplant surgeons are not allowed even to interact with a dying patient.) This common-sensical rule underpins organ donation in the United States and many other countries.
Most donor organs today are obtained after brain death, defined by most state laws as a condition of permanent unconsciousness with no spontaneous breathing, no response to pain and no primitive reflexes — in other words, devastation of the whole brain. Organs obtained this way are often relatively healthy, because brain-dead patients can continue to circulate blood and oxygen.
Brain death is rare, though. In New York State, with a population of 20 million, there are on average fewer than 500 cases suitable for organ procurement and transplantation each year.
Far more often, people die because their heart has permanently stopped beating, which is known as circulatory death. However, precisely because the blood has stopped circulating, organs from people who die this way are often damaged and unsuited for transplantation.
The need for donor organs is urgent. An estimated 15 people die in this country every day waiting for a transplant. We need to figure out how to obtain more healthy organs from donors while maintaining strict ethical standards.
New technologies can help. But the best solution, we believe, is legal: We need to broaden the definition of death.
Consider how things currently work. In the procedure known as donation after circulatory death, a typical donor is in an irreversible coma from, say,...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I took off organ donor years ago. The doctors, the hospital, the agency collecting organs and everyone involved makes huge profits off organ transplants. Yet, my family gets zero. Until my family can benefit the same way the system does it’s a “No” from me!
Organ-Leggers are truly becoming a thing.
Again, ask around. Don’t trust just me.
“if you sign a Donor card or do not make your preferences known to your family or friends. That you could be Donor-ed to death and striped like stolen car.”
I’ve heard that they do that, anyhow, even without a donor card.
“I saw and heard make me distrust most if not all in the medical profession.”
My sister worked for a Medical Malpractice insurance company. She has no PCP, and if she goes for healthcare you know it’s the absolute last resort. She trusts nobody.
Use the old-fashioned kind of definition - along the lines of the T-4 program, but better.
If you’re not a ‘producer’, you get to ‘produce’.
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What an ignorant thing for a urinalist to type.
The brain is what signals the heart to beat.
/
We need to broaden the definition of death.
Like they broadened the definition of what a man or woman is ?
Or what a person is ?
( Babies in the womb )
No.
The reason organ donors are decreased has more to do with distrust in the medical profession IMHO.
I was 18 when I contacted double pneumonia in A school.
I was in a coma for 2 weeks. Thankfully it was a USCG facility where there was no incentive to harvest my organs.
I’m a donor - but I don’t plan on leaving much behind that will be useful to anyone else....
Yeah, the joke’s going to be on whoever gets my liver.
Brain death was specifically created for the purpose of a morr bountiful organ harvest. What’s next? Probably economic liability. Is the person a strain on resources?
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