Dead id Dead, and there needs to be a thorough way of examining someone required by law BEFORE organs are harvested. OIf the surgeon harvesting was the same one doing a liver transplant an our later, chances are this young man would no longer be among the living, killed by a harvester.
Something to rememeber.
I would only sign an organ donation card if they promised to run an EKG and electronic heart monitor scan, enforced by law, and a guarantee that the harvesting physicians were NOT transplant doctors,before they took them from my "freshly dead" body.
I will not sign a donor card either. I have also begun to rethink the entire organ donation practice. I like it less and less as I get older.
There ARE rules prohibiting the physicians who declare the patient dead to have anything to do with the care of the patients receiving the organs. Two indepedent neurologists, not from the same group, must declare brain death. A “brain dead” person WILL have an EKG - electrical heart activity and a beating heart - but his EEG - electrical brain activity will be flat.
All that said, I’ve told my husband, he makes the decision if it ever comes to that. I’m not checking the box on my license.
After reading about many of these “mistakes” I have had the donor designation removed from my license. My family knows my wishes and if I am truly “brain dead” they will make the correct call at that time.
If your heart has stopped beating, you cannot be an organ donor. Your heart has to be beating and you must be breathing for the organs to be used.
When there is no longer brain activity, a person is considered dead for the purposes of organ donation, although they are likely being kept alive through the use of machines. The article does not say what verification procedures were used to pronounce this boy dead so it is impossible to determine whether it was an error or a miracle.
Organs are much more likely to be useful if the donor is not actually dead at the harvesting so there is a lot of fudging of what it means to be dead. A doctor gets a lot more career brownie points receiving your donation than he does saving your life.
> This is the reason why I will not succumb to the liberal socialist harvesting of human body parts process,becuase once you sign that organ donors card, you are on a roll, and they can miss the spark of life.
Here’s another reason. My friend, an EMT, told me not to sign the card. Why? Because if you are found unconscious and it looks like you are dying and do not have an organ donor card on you, then they have to keep up life saving efforts twice as long as required for someone with a signed organ donor card.