You do know that the donatee can’t be physically dead to harvest organs, right? That the organs permanently degrade within seconds of the heart stopping. That’s why they take the heart out last. I had all this explained to me by a transplant doctor over dinner at his sister’s house. He was all for organ donation, it kept him in work, but he was brutally honest about how the organs are removed from still breathing people.
These “still breathing people” are having their lungs inflated by the ventilator.
Part of the process of determining brain death is removing the ventilator to search for the gasp reflex...does the person’s brain have any ability to initiate breath.
This is one of many reflexes that are tested for - on top of brainwave tests and blood flow images.
I think that describing them as “still breathing” is misleading.
Did this doctor also “explain” to you that a truly brain dead person cannot possible breath on their own? Once brain death occurs, often well before in traumatic brain injury cases; the person is breathing only through artificial respiration and their heart beating only through artificial means? The reason for keeping a brain dead person on artificial respiration and keeping their heart functioning through artificial means, after several doctors have declared the person dead for all intense purposes, is in case there is a living will or other legal designation that states the person is an organ doner and or gives the family some time to consider organ donation.
I have designated myself as an organ donor and I have absolutely no fear what so ever that my organs will be “harvested” from me while I’m still functionally alive with any hope of recovery. And ziravan eloquently pointed out why organ donation is a good thing to do and what safe guards are in place to safe guard that those are merely unconscious or truly comatose and not brain dead are not harvested for their organs.
If I’m ever declared brain dead or with a brain with all the functionality and cognitive ability of a baked potato, I’d much rather be removed from artificial life support after having my organs and tissues go to someone in need as I have really no need for them anymore. I have no desire to have my dead brain and merely my body kept alive through artificial means to no other end other than just to keep my body, an empty shell of the person I was once was while “alive”, kept “alive” for or an undetermined time, weeks, moths, years, with great expense to my estate, and to my living heirs and for no good purpose.