Moreover, surgeons have observed that brain-dead patients frequently react strongly to surgical incision at the time of organ procurement, with a rapidly increasing heart rate and a dramatic rise in blood pressure. Because of these signs of distress, donors are sometimes anesthetized during organ retrieval. Again, one must ask, what purpose would anesthesia serve for a corpse?
Byrne and his colleagues bring the argument to its logical conclusion when they maintain that it is impossible to remove vital organs from a corpse and successfully use those organs for transplant. If brain-dead patients were actually dead by classical criteria, the lack of oxygen would quickly cause their organs to deteriorate. According to Byrne:
The present state of the art for these vital organs is such that they have to come from someone who is alive. It takes about an hour of operating to get the heart out, during which time the heart has to be living, and many other organs and systems of the body are also functioning. Likewise, to get a liver out takes perhaps three hours of operating. Without circulation, the heart becomes unable to be used for transplant in about three or four minutes. Likewise the liver becomes not useful for transplant in about three or four minutes.
"Moreover, surgeons have observed that brain-dead patients frequently react strongly to surgical incision at the time of organ procurement, with a rapidly increasing heart rate and a dramatic rise in blood pressure. Because of these signs of distress, donors are sometimes anesthetized during organ retrieval. Again, one must ask, what purpose would anesthesia serve for a corpse?"
http://catholiceducation.org/articles/medical_ethics/me0054.html
Very informative and very balanced. Worth the read.
I sniped the part above because it horrified me!
It's not representative of the entire article.
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