Dick Teresi wants you to think twice before filling out an organ donor card, said Brian Bethune in Macleans. In The Undead, the former Science Digest editor looks closely at the moment when a person is deemed deceased by the medical profession. “In ancient times, people set up vigils over their relatives and friends to make sure they were dead, because one of the worst things one could do was bury a living person,” he says. Now that doctors make the call, the decision is usually straightforward. But not in instances of brain death. “The brain-dead are legally, but not biologically, dead,” he says. “Vital organs still function. It’s not certain, but you might feel pain under surgery.” It’s at this stage, which Teresi calls being “pretty dead,” that organs are harvested for transplant.
Teresi refuses to be listed as a donor himself. “Becoming an organ donor seems like a win-win situation,” he wrote in The Wall Street Journal. “But what are you giving up?” The author’s worry, of course, is that doctors are rushing to call patients brain dead so that organs can be retrieved. “Organ transplantation is a $20 billion per year business. Average recipients are charged $750,000 for a transplant, and at an average 3.3 organs, that is more than $2 million per body.” Teresi doesn’t mind the idea of his organs being harvested once he’s dead. He’d just prefer that a loved one be in a position to demand that the doctors run a test for higher-brain activity. “Not being a donor on your license,” he says, “can give you more bargaining power.”
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