Word: donor
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Just two months ago, when Dr. Christiaan Barnard remarked that he would not hesitate to remove a still-beating heart for transplantation if the donor had suffered indisputable "brain death," the suggestion still seemed shocking to many surgeons. Since then, heart transplants have become increasingly common and the criteria of brain death generally agreed upon. Thus, gathering last week in Manhattan, most of the world's transplant surgeons accepted the idea of a beating-heart transplant with Barnardian aplomb...
...responsibility of determining death. And if there is any prospect of a transplant, those physicians must not be members of the transplant team. On the need for this division of authority, Sir Leonard Mallen said: "Doctors must never be in a position where it could be said that a donor was murdered to obtain an organ for a transplant...
There was also the problem of the bile ducts. The donor liver had come with its gall bladder and ducts attached. Rather than attempt a dangerously delicate joining of the common duct to the duodenum, Moore decided to attach the new gall bladder itself to the duodenum, allowing the bile to bypass the common duct. The entire operation took eight hours. Not until Tommy Gorence was sitting up and eating well, apparently making a good recovery, did the Brigham publicize the case. Tommy made good progress for four weeks, then ran into difficulties with a lung infection, a common complication...
...time was the most basic of all: Are heart transplants morally justified? Since all the principals at the symposium had performed transplants, they had answered this question long ago in their own minds. But there remained some sticking points in medical ethics. How to determine the death of the donor? On three criteria there was general agreement: The patient must no longer have any natural heartbeat, or respiration, or reflexes. Beyond that, he must have a "flat" electroencephalogram-no "brain wave" activity-but for how long? After the closed sessions in Cape Town, all that Spokesman Cooley could...
Father Damien had no problems regarding the donor. "The donor," he wrote, "is in no way 'sacrificed' by the doctors. He has already been in a closed circuit [heart-lung machine] for days, and is therefore already dead (flat electroencephalogram, etc.). His survival is artificial. So, no problem...