• The dark side of Organ Donors
    107 replies, posted
[QUOTE=The Baconator;35110351]If you are brain dead you are dead. Your consciousness is inside your brain.[/QUOTE] I can see you didn't read the thread at all then?
[QUOTE=Desuh;35110459]I am paranoid about this. I am afraid that if I become a organ donor that I will more likely let to die so they can get my organs.[/QUOTE] Uh... seriously?
[QUOTE=Bat-shit;35120951]Actually what they talked about in the article quite a bit was about the brain activity of a brain dead person. Or a person who can't really move. Also, So something tells me that even if you are brain dead, you might not be as brain dead as it seems to non brain dead person.[/QUOTE] Yeah I don't think I'll be an organ donor, I'm not risking it.
Ever since watching that one episode of House with that guy who had Locked-In Syndrome, I'm afraid of falling into something like that and having myself harvested. I'd much rather keep my organs to myself, thank you. That is, unless I'm still alive, consenting, and a family member or friend needs a kidney or liver chunk or something.
[QUOTE=gbtygfvyg;35118046]The thing with being brain-dead is that they can usually snap out of it after given some time. It's like the brain shuts down functions of the body so it can cut off unnecessary resources and repair itself in time. At least that's how I always saw it.[/QUOTE] Ummm... It's called biological/cellular death bro. Cut off O2 from flowing into the brain for a few minutes the cells start breaking down ungodly quick, that's why if you take a blood gas on someone who went into cardiac arrest you will see that their lactic acid is incredibly high, and their PH is acidic, life on a cellular level doesn't get along too well with those kind of conditions. There really isn't much "repairing" when it comes to neurons and brain cells. Maybe new neurological pathways being used that are undamaged, (as seen by the good old phantom limb sensation being caused by stroking someone cheeks), but generally when it comes to the brain, from my understanding what is lost is lost. Given though the limited understanding of where "we" are in our own brain, i think that just because someone is unresponsive, has brain-stem death, and no EEG activity doesn't always mean that every neuron that could be responsible for generating your conscious is completely gone. Now are you saveable/recoverable? god probably not, but i think people should stop discounting vegetables as well, just being vegetables. They're still people.
[QUOTE=carcarcargo;35122496]Yeah I don't think I'll be an organ donor, I'm not risking it.[/QUOTE] Yeah it would be painful. Don't we have any incidents like that happened?
[QUOTE=Rubs10;35110567]Yeah, doctors are insane and evil people who are trying to kill everyone. Those spasms are actually signs of a conscious person, and doctors are just lying to us. I'll trust doctors to figure out what's brain dead and what isn't, not some blogger. Thanks anyway.[/QUOTE] The problem is, if you read the article, that many doctors thought the person wasn't brain dead, but they continued the procedure anyway.
[IMG]http://fc02.deviantart.net/fs44/f/2009/146/1/3/GeneCo_patch_by_EMO_FEET.jpg[/IMG] *cough cough*
[QUOTE=Ghhostface;35150848]The problem is, if you read the article, that many doctors thought the person wasn't brain dead, but they continued the procedure anyway.[/QUOTE] That would be nerve wrecking i imagine.
[QUOTE=The Baconator;35110351]If you are brain dead you are dead. Your consciousness is inside your brain.[/QUOTE] Read the article. Not all people declared brain dead, are actually brain dead. Many still exhibit brain activity and signs of a living person. [editline]15th March 2012[/editline] [QUOTE=Rubs10;35110567]Yeah, doctors are insane and evil people who are trying to kill everyone. Those spasms are actually signs of a conscious person, and doctors are just lying to us. I'll trust doctors to figure out what's brain dead and what isn't, not some blogger. Thanks anyway.[/QUOTE] The blogger cites other doctors and even a peer reviewed case study. Believe it or not, many medical professionals hold many different opinions. A general consensus is sometimes hard to find.
I want to be frozen and brought back to life when immortality is a reality. So I'm keeping my organs thank you.
[QUOTE=Funcoot;35152617]Read the article. Not all people declared brain dead, are actually brain dead. Many still exhibit brain activity and signs of a living person. [editline]15th March 2012[/editline] The blogger cites other doctors and even a peer reviewed case study. Believe it or not, many medical professionals hold many different opinions. A general consensus is sometimes hard to find.[/QUOTE] I'm sorry, but have you read the mentioned case study? I have. First of all case studies are in the bottom of hierarchy of evidence in medicine. Second, the blogger simply took one sentence out of a case series that looked into three different cases of vital organ transplantation. The point of that case series study was not about warning people of dangers of organ donation or the dark side of organ donation. If you do not have access to the article, I will summarize it. It looks into three cases. The first case is about a donor who was declared brain dead after intercranial hemorrhage, and began to breathe spontaneously after the vena cava has been severed and the liver has been removed. It apparently was determined that the patient had gasped at the end of the apnea test (this test is done to prove brain death) and the neurosurgeon had certified him brain dead. Since the details of the case are quite limited one can also assume a mistake on the neurosurgeon's part amongst many other things. While it is horrible to think something like this can ever happen, mistakes do happen in every stage of medical care and being a donor does not have any bearing on being misdiagnosed. There are many people each year whose wrong limb is amputated because of mistakes. Second case is where the blogger got his quote from, but quite mistakenly. The author of the case series (Gail A. Van Norman) was not present, the case was described by someone who was present to the author and the case was not independently verified by the author. Apparently the patient was spontaneously breathing and hypertension was observed during the incision, but the patient was previously declared brain dead by two separate physicians. The third case, which was also went unmentioned by the blogger, was about a patient who suffered from severe seizures, had brain infarcts and edema. Consent for organ donation was obtained from the family. The day of the donation, the patient was discovered to have small and reactive pupils, weak corneal and weak gag reflexes. After several drugs were discontinued the patient coughed and moved extremities. The donation was canceled, after treatment and surgery she regained consciousness and was discharged. The final points of the article mention how the definition of death has changed over the years and how different countries have different laws surrounding the definition of death. It is supposed to be a warning to anesthesiologists for having current information on the definition of death and how to follow and monitor for certain responses, and how having a certain and infallible definition of death would help both the doctors for making decisions and for the patient's family who have to make a choice of organ donation and/or want to be comfortable with the choice the patient made. [editline]16th March 2012[/editline] Medical articles, like all scientific journals, are not pieces of information strung together. The article should be treated as a whole. Obviously if you are trying to make a controversial point, what better way is there to pick and choose specific bits of a single case study and quote them out of context.
[QUOTE=Funcoot;35152617]Read the article. Not all people declared brain dead, are actually brain dead. Many still exhibit brain activity and signs of a living person.[/QUOTE] Nope. All modern people declared brain dead are brain dead. They display activity that is [I]not[/I] indicative of being alive. [QUOTE=Xenocidebot;35116186][URL="http://www.neurology.org/content/74/23/1911.full"]In adults, there are no published reports of recovery of neurologic function after a diagnosis of brain death using the criteria reviewed in the 1995 American Academy of Neurology practice parameter.[/URL] [URL="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1504374/"]And, for those in the UK: "The validity of clinical criteria for diagnosing brain death has been investigated in three ways. A total of 447 published cases were reviewed. In three neurosurgical units (Cambridge, Glasgow, and Swansea) 609 patients diagnosed clinically as brain dead were studied; 326 had final cardiac asystole while still being ventilated, and ventilation was discontinued in the remainder. No patient recovered. The median time in hospital before the heart finally stopped was 3 1/2-4 1/2 days, with 30-40 hours on the ventilator. Analysis of prospective data from three countries on patients with severe head injuries showed that not one of 1003 survivors would ever have been suspected of being brain dead even in their worst state soon after injury."[/URL][/QUOTE] [QUOTE=Funcoot;35152617]The blogger cites other doctors and even a peer reviewed case study. Believe it or not, many medical professionals hold many different opinions. A general consensus is sometimes hard to find.[/QUOTE] Citations: -[I]A[/I] cardiologist who feels uncomfortable -[I]An[/I] anesthesiologist who wrote an article on [URL="http://www.rtjournalonline.com/A%20matter%20of%20life%20and%20death%20--%20Van%20Norman%20--%20Anaesthesiology%201999.pdf"]making sure you declare brain death [I]correctly[/I][/URL] due to changes in international law on the subject at the time -[I]A[/I] study that [URL="http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2011/12/24/brain.awr282.abstract"]hasn't been relevant for over a decade[/URL] Gee that totally supersedes current international medical consensuses. Oh, wait, no, it doesn't!
[QUOTE=Desuh;35110459]I am paranoid about this. I am afraid that if I become a organ donor that I will more likely let to die so they can get my organs.[/QUOTE] If they did then the medical system would have to be called into serious question. Personally, I am an organ donor (have been for years) and I have been in the hospital numerous times whilst also having had 2 serious surgeries. So far, I am still alive and kicking. Though I obviously don't expect you to take me at my word since I can't exactly prove it aside from uploading the medical records that are currently in the possession of my doctors.
What is this, the New Age alternative medicine chat? Braindead means dead, you're just a hunk of meat at that point.
[QUOTE=The Baconator;35110351]If you are brain dead you are dead. Your consciousness is inside your brain.[/QUOTE] Who's to say a higher form of thinking, such as you thinking about how hot a chick is, isn't going on? If you read the article, apparently quite a few people had higher cognitive thinking going on even though the part of the brain that was tested, and required to be claimed as Dead, was dead I think they should do As many tests as they can, instead of just a couple. What's a few more minutes
[QUOTE=hexpunK;35110538]A fully functional human body with no conciousness if pretty bloody useless though. Especially if that person is brain-dead, so why not harvest the organs and help someone else? Just because you can't consent to how they treat the harvesting process doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. Oh and plants are pretty aware, they move to maximise sunlight, react to physical changes, etc. A brain-dead body doesn't do anything.[/QUOTE] So suddenly euthanasia is acceptable? FFS, you guys can never make up your mind.
Honestly if I went brain dead right now, and I'd have to be a vegetable all of my life. I would rather them just pull the plug. I couldn't bear the thought of me being such a huge burden on my family/friends and make them take care of me.
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