e potential donor and obtain consent for organ donation. At this point the patient is still, essentially alive, only being kept this way by machinery. However, his brain is no longer functioning. The doctors who are taking care of him are entirely separate from the doctors who will handle the donation procedure.According to Dr. Punch, In reality, you must be more dead to be brain dead than is necessary to be declared dead. As weird as this sounds, you officially dead when a licensed physician declares you deadyou are brain dead when a complex set of conditions are satisfied that vary from state to state and hospital to hospital (www.transweb.org 07 Nov 99). When consent is given the potential donors vital information is put into a computer and matches are printed out for recipients in that area. Time is critical. Organs can only be out of the body for a certain amount of time. Once the organs are harvested from the donor, they are packed in ice and transported to the transplant location, by the quickest means possible. Again, only 10,000 to 12,000 people die each year in a way that enables them to become organ donors, one can understand the urgency of pre-consenting to organ donation.Another common objection to organ donation is ones religious beliefs. However, according to CORE, Major organized religions support donation, typically considering it a generous act(www.core.org 11 Nov 99).Many people have expressed feelings that well connected people, or wealthy people receive organs for transplant quicker than others do, for example, Mickey Mantle receiving a liver. Many people stated it was because he was famous. However, Dr. Punch states, There is absolutely no evidence that he was not the most ill person in his region of the country on the day he got his liver transplant(www.transweb.org 07 Nov 99). Organs are matched within regions. When CORE receives information of a potential donor, that persons height, weight and blood...
