The Dead Donor Rule as Policy Indoctrination

Reevaluating the dead donor rule.

The dead donor rule justifies current practice in organ procurement for transplantation and states that organ donors must be dead prior to donation. The majority of organ donors are diagnosed as having suffered brain death and hence are declared dead by neurological criteria. However, a significant amount of unrest in both the philosophical and the medical literature has surfaced since this pra...

The dead donor rule and organ transplantation.

674 S ince its inception, organ trans-plantation has been guided by the overarching ethical requirement known as the dead donor rule, which simply states that patients must be declared dead before the removal of any vital organs for transplantation. Before the development of modern critical care, the diagnosis of death was relatively straightforward: patients were dead when they were cold, blue...

The dead-donor rule and the future of organ donation.

1287 cular risks of rosiglitazone led to a major change in FDA policy regarding the approval of all new diabetes drugs. From a cardiovascular perspective, rosiglitazone, saxagliptin, and alogliptin appear to be relatively safe. It is disappointing, however, that neither intensive glycemic control nor the use of specific diabetes medications is associated with any suggestion of cardiovascular be...

Brain death, cardiac death, and the dead donor rule.

Life or death for the dead-donor rule?

to accept this active role in the dying process has probably enhanced, rather than eroded, the public trust in the profession. Our society generally supports the view that people should be granted the broadest range of freedoms compatible with assurance of the same for others. Some people may have personal moral views that preclude the approach we describe here, and these views should be respec...