PHI 2396 Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: Brainstem, Cardiac Arrest, Death Organ

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: Philosophy
• Course: PHI 2396
• Professor: Dean Lauer

Document Summary

Ideally, organ harvesting would take place before death for the highest quality organ. In practice organ retrieval taken place within 5 minutes up to 30 mins after cardiac death. Organ viability is time-sensitive and some organ-transplant doctors have been viewed as vultures waiting to pounce with the scalpel or even encouraging death by suggesting opiate and blood thinners to the still live patient. The national guidelines in canada for pronouncing cardiac death for organ donation requires doctors to wait at least 5 mins after the heart stops beating. Also called cardiopulmonary, cardiorespiratory, or clinical death. Harvard medical school ad hoc committee directed by dr. henry beecher proposed that death be defined as when the entire brain irreversibly ceases functioning. The brain must be: unreceptive and unresponsive to stimuli or inner need, lack of any movement (breathing, etc) under continuous medical observation to one hour, lack of reflex actions, such as blinking or eye movement.