Organ Donors are Alive when their Organs are Harvested Prior to 1968 a person was declared dead only after their breathing and heart stopped for a determinate period of time. The current terminology "Brain Death" was unheard of. When surgeons realized they had the capability of taking organs from one seemingly “close to death” person and implanting them into another person to keep the recipient alive longer, a "Pandora’s Box" was opened. In the beginning, through trial and error, they discovered it was not possible to perform this "miraculous" #surgery with organs taken from someone truly dead, even if the donor was without circulation for merely a few minutes, because organ damage occurs within a very brief time after circulation stops. To justify their experimental procedures it was necessary for them to come up with a solution which is how the term "#BrainDeath" was contrived. Much is being done to get your organs. For an organ to be suitable for #transplantation it must be healthy and it must come from a living person. Once DBD (Donation After Brain Death) or DCD (Donation After Cardiac Death) has been verified and permission extracted from distraught family members (in cases where relatives cannot be located the #government often now makes the determination on our behalf) the "organ donor" undergoes hours, sometimes days, of torturous treatment utilized to protect and preserve the body-container of "spare parts!" The "organ donor" is forced to endure the excruciating painful and ongoing chemical treatment in preparation for organ excising. Literally the "donor" is now an organ warehouse and used for the sole purpose of organ preservation until a compatible recipient can be located. Donation after circulatory death (DCD) can be performed on neurologically intact donors who do not fulfill neurologic or brain death criteria before circulatory arrest. This commentary focuses on the most controversial donor-related issues anticipated from mandatory ...