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There are quite a lot of misguided statements in this article, like you are "alive" because your heart is beating, or you feel pain if they don't give you pain

There are quite a lot of misguided statements in this article, like you are "alive" because your heart is beating, or you feel pain if they don't give you pain killers. You should be "brain dead" to be an organ donor. And brain dead means dead, no chance or recovery, I am sure there are cases that mistakes happen but that is a mistake, you need to be confirmed brain dead by quite a lot of doctors to get harvested!

cobrausn 14y ago
Yeah, I would like to see some actual numbers before coming to any conclusion. Something along the lines of the number of people that have recovered from the state wherein they could legally take your organs. Not sure if those numbers would be easy to come by.
- alimoeeny 14y ago
  I don't know if it is easy to come up with these numbers (legal and policy maters aside from a purely medical stand point). Still as someone who have been around transplant teams, I can say at least in the state of Maryland, things are very well under control and I for one would not worry too much about been taken advantage of. But definitely there are places that things are not handled as they should.
vannevar 14y ago
And brain dead means dead, no chance or recovery... The key point of the article is that the test allegedly used to determine brain death isn't a very good one. I'd be curious to know whether the test described (pulling the patient off a respirator for two minutes) is indeed the actual criterion used. It sounds suspiciously simplistic.
- alimoeeny 14y ago
  No, this is what is disturbing about this article, you can be alive and not able to breath, this is not the test used anywhere in the world, there are tones of tests that they do including EEG that needs to be flat (I think it is repeated a few times with intervals and they make sure the patient is not on any drugs that suppresses the brain and flattens the EEG and ...

cobrausn 14y ago

Yeah, I would like to see some actual numbers before coming to any conclusion. Something along the lines of the number of people that have recovered from the state wherein they could legally take your organs. Not sure if those numbers would be easy to come by.

alimoeeny 14y ago
I don't know if it is easy to come up with these numbers (legal and policy maters aside from a purely medical stand point). Still as someone who have been around transplant teams, I can say at least in the state of Maryland, things are very well under control and I for one would not worry too much about been taken advantage of. But definitely there are places that things are not handled as they should.

vannevar 14y ago

And brain dead means dead, no chance or recovery... The key point of the article is that the test allegedly used to determine brain death isn't a very good one. I'd be curious to know whether the test described (pulling the patient off a respirator for two minutes) is indeed the actual criterion used. It sounds suspiciously simplistic.

alimoeeny 14y ago
No, this is what is disturbing about this article, you can be alive and not able to breath, this is not the test used anywhere in the world, there are tones of tests that they do including EEG that needs to be flat (I think it is repeated a few times with intervals and they make sure the patient is not on any drugs that suppresses the brain and flattens the EEG and ...