Reply #348: Dead organs aren't necessarily unfit for donation. [View All]

One of my good friends died last spring all of a sudden at work from a heart attack. He was still able to donate organs, as he'd wanted, after they declared him dead at the hospital, knowing he'd been dead for awhile by then.

My husband has had to ask family members if their loved one wanted to donate their organs. It's not an easy thing to ask or bring up when a loved one is dying or has just died, even though he did everything he could to keep them alive. He always respected their wishes, as did everyone he ever worked with in residency. He had a couple of patients who would've been good organ donors but whose families turned it down. That was the end of it, and they were left in peace.

I agree that maybe there might be some less than ethical doctors out there, but all of the ones I know would never even think of pressuring a family or hastening someone's death just to get their kidneys or whatever.