What You Lose When You Sign That Organ-Donor Card – WSJ.com.

According to Dick Teresi,   your family loses rights over the disposition of your body, and the means by which organs are obtained  if you sign that donor card.

The tests for determining brain death mainly evaluate brain stem activity.   The author recommends cerebral blood flow studies to give more certainty that the higher cortical areas are dead.

A trip to the Amazon  page for Teresi’s book on the subject reveals many angry comments, mostly from people offended by the WSJ article, who did not read his entire book.    People who have received transplants, or who have donated the organs of their loved ones, desperately want to believe that all is well.  Their emotional reactions provide  a good impetus to buy that book, which Pharmer has just done.

Pharmer understands that in the health care field, there are bioethicists, who function to assure  their own definitions of ‘quality of life’.   There are diagnostic errors, and there are naturally cover ups .     The Hippocratic Oath is no longer used at most medical schools, because it strictly forbids killing or purposely harming a patient.

The WSJ author’s recommendation that families  oversee the donation process more closely to assure proper treatment is  a sensible precaution.  Those who want the organs might consent to more thorough examination and more respectful, humane treatment of the dying or deceased patient.   It will also give greater assurances to transplant  recipients that no human being was  abused or killed to obtain an organ for them.

Perhaps a return to the ideals of the Hippocratic oath would  increase  public trust in the health care professions and prevent unnecessary transplant delays .