I signed up to be an organ donor before it was an option on the driver's license. I thought, "Might as well save someone else's life; I'm not going to need my organs when I'm dead." Well, I just learned that the body is not dead when they take your organs, otherwise, the organs are no good.
Dr. Paul Byrne, a Neonatologist, Director of Neonatology and Director of Pediatrics at St. Charles Mercy Hospital in Oregon, Ohio was the guest on a radio program I listened to on RBN. The other guest was a mother who lost her 15 yr. old son at the hands of hospital staff. While she and her husband were in the waiting room praying for their son's recovery, the doctors gave him paralyzing drugs and were lining up organ recipients. The parents were told their son was brain dead and to go home. Meanwhile, he was kept alive on a respirator for 5 hours until the recipients arrived. Organ donors are given paralyzing drugs so they don't squirm on the operating table, but no anesthesia is given while the organs are harvested.
http://www.chninternational.com/brain_death_is_not_death_byrne_paul_md.html
Dr. Paul Byrne explains:
When organs are removed from a "brain dead" donor, all the vital signs of the “donors” are still present prior to the harvesting of organs, such as: normal body temperature and blood pressure; the heart is beating; vital organs, like the liver and kidneys, are functioning; and the donor is breathing with the help of a ventilator.
Furthermore, Bryne told the Academy, that approach is required for most transplant surgery, because vital organs deteriorate very quickly after a patient dies. "After true death," he said, "unpaired vital organs (specifically the heart and whole liver) cannot be transplanted.”
. A large number of brain-injured patients, even in deep coma, can recover to lead a normal daily life; their nervous tissue may be only silent, not irreversibly damaged, as a consequence of a partial reduction of the blood supply to the brain. (This phenomenon, called “ischemic penumbra,” was not known when the first neurological criteria for brain death were established 37 years ago.) However, the apnea test (considered the most important step for the diagnosis of “brain death” or brain-stem death) may induce irreversible intra-cranial circulatory collapse or even cardiac arrest, thereby preventing neurological recovery.
· During the apnea test, the patients are prevented from expelling carbon dioxide (CO2), which becomes a poison to the heart as the blood CO2 concentration rises.
· As a consequence of this procedure, the blood pressure drops, and the blood supply to the brain irreversibly ceases, thereby causing rather than diagnosing irreversible brain damage; by reducing the blood pressure, the “test” further reduces the blood supply to the respiratory centers in the brain, thereby preventing the patient from breathing during this procedure. (By breathing, the patient would demonstrate that he is alive.)
· Irreversible cardiac arrest (death), cardiac arrhythmias, myocardial infarction, and other life-threatening detrimental effects may also occur during the apnea test. Therefore, irreversible brain damage may occur during and before the end of the diagnostic procedures for “brain death.”