Opinion: Dead enough for transplant

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The boundaries of when a person is dead got pushed a little more when doctors in Denver transplanted the hearts of brain-damaged newborns within two minutes after they were disconnected from life support, as described in today’s New England Journal of Medicine.

Until now, organs could be transplanted only after a patient had been declared brain dead, but since some patients have overwhelming and hopeless brain damage, and yet are not technically brain-dead, health officials supported the idea of donation after cardiac death, in which the patient is removed from life support and the heart is allowed to stop beating. But since the heart can restart on its own in those first moments, doctors typically have waited two to five minutes. In these cases, the doctors waited 75 seconds; doctors are debating whether death was pushed too far, with the Washington Post reporting that one doctor called this tantamount to murder.

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The 2005 photo of two-week old Nick Draper awaiting a heart transplant (he received one early the next year) is by Anne Cusack of the Los Angeles Times.