Counterpoint: are donors after circulatory death really dead, and does it matter? No and not really.

摘要

From at least 1968 until the present, prevailing ethical thinking about organ donation has been shaped by the perceived need to conform to the so-called Dead Donor Rule (DDR), which states that vital organs may be removed from patients only after they have been declared dead. Elsewhere, we have argued against the fiction that individuals diagnosed as brain dead are dead because they maintain an extensive range of biologic functioning of the organism as a whole.13 The determination of death in the case of donation after the circulatory determination of death (DCDD) relies on a more subtle fudging of the truth: Although imminently dying, donors under DCDD protocols are not known to be dead at the time that organs are procured.