Abstract

Most of the audience were students and physicians. But this man looked more like a patient. The panel discussion, part of a third year round, Brain Death and Organ Transplantation, was open to the public.I’d been arguing, on the basis of well known data,1–4 that “brain death” is not death. So, taking a heart from a “brain dead” patient is killing. But I would not totally oppose killing patients for their organs, provided that there is informed consent, and with further limitations. Truog’s proposal to take organs from persistent vegetative state patients2 is too extreme. Patients in a persistent vegetative state sometimes return to various levels of consciousness.5,6 So killing them for their organs …