Shock: Requiring Death before Organ Donation Is Unnecessary, Say Experts

Because organ donors are often alive when their organs are harvested, the medical community should not require donors to be declared dead, but instead adopt more “honest” moral criteria that allow the harvesting of organs from “dying” or “severely injured” patients, with proper consent, three leading experts have argued.  This approach, they say, would avoid the “pseudo-objective” claim that a donor is “really dead,” which is often based upon purely ideological definitions of death designed to expand the organ donor pool, and would allow organ harvesters to be more honest with the public, as well as ensure that donors don’t feel pain during the harvesting process.