Reconsidering the dead donor rule.

Abstract

If we abide by the dead donor rule, we have to comply with the rule that an organ donor must be declared to be irreversibly and unequivocally dead and not merely dying before the commencement of organ extraction. In this paper, I will show the following: that living donor transplantations violate the dead donor rule; that we cannot say that not only all the brain dead patients (HBDs) but also all the cardiac arrest patients (NHBDs) have been irreversibly and univocally dead at the time of organ extraction; and that we do not know how to tell living potential donors from dead potential donors.