Horrifying organ donation article

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’ve participated in dozens of organ donations and harvests mostly through Gift of Life and have never, ever seen someone even remotely under treated or prematurely disconnected because someone else needed their organs.

Far more often someone who wished to donate is prevented from donating by some rule or timing issue.

I’m a donor and will remain one.

-physician

"I make money from harvesting organs! I have never, in my opinion, ever under treated anyone or prematurely disconnected anyone! Of course, that depends on your definition of death ..."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Glad to see that this is on Kennedy‘s radar.

Good. I hope it’s not just talk though.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Here is a gift link to that horrible OpEd about harvesting organs before people are actually dead, by simply changing the definition of death: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/30/opinion/organ-donors-death-definition.html?unlocked_article_code=1.bk8.UKRQ._dy5lv2ydEwY&smid=url-share

Thank you.

[Anonymous]

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Wow. Andrew Kaufman, MD is a great American hero. He’s a Forensic Psychiatrist and Expert Witness.

And not afraid of speaking the truth.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’ve participated in dozens of organ donations and harvests mostly through Gift of Life and have never, ever seen someone even remotely under treated or prematurely disconnected because someone else needed their organs.

Far more often someone who wished to donate is prevented from donating by some rule or timing issue.

I’m a donor and will remain one.

-physician

"I make money from harvesting organs! I have never, in my opinion, ever under treated anyone or prematurely disconnected anyone! Of course, that depends on your definition of death ..."

This just shows your ignorance. I’m the PP physician, and have never made a penny from an organ donation nor has any doctor I have ever worked with. First of all, it’s ILLEGAL to sell organs. Hence the word, DONATION. Secondly, academic doctors like me do not get paid on a per patient basis (and if we did there would be more money in keeping people alive than in declaring them dead), we are annually salaried not incentivized by individual cases. Third, brain death is legal death in all 50 states. Determining brain death is a medical reality not a matter of spin or opinion. Declaring someone brain dead who you know is not is tantamount to premeditated murder. Stop making facetious jokes about it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are no rules preventing anyone from donating if their organs are valuable.

This is for 10:11.

There absolutely are such rules. Many diseases and medical conditions are deemed to render the organs unfit for recipients and not all of the rules make perfect sense.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Wow. Andrew Kaufman, MD is a great American hero. He’s a Forensic Psychiatrist and Expert Witness.

And not afraid of speaking the truth.

This man (a self-promoter who bills himself as a “natural healer consultant” among other things) is a shockingly irresponsible idiot and should lose his medical license, if he hasn’t already, for posting comments like this. Google him and you will find many reputable sources exposing him.

Brain death IS DEATH. Brain death means there is absolutely positively beyond any doubt NO chance that your consciousness exists or ever will again in any form. It is the complete cessation of function of all your brain cortical neurons that support thought, awareness, and personhood. Brain death leads to heart and lung death in 100% of cases it is only a matter of time. If it were not for the machines, brain dead patients would be heart and lung dead too already, because they could not protect their own airways. It is exclusively because of the machines that these people even have beating hearts to perfuse the organs at all.

This self-described “expert” and psychiatrist is stunningly ignorant. It is a f*c£ing tragedy if even one person who could be saved by an organ donation is not, as a result of the lies and ignorance he is spreading. He is not an expert but rather a fraud who is not even trained or boarded in the relevant specialty (although you don’t have to be to understand why he is so egregiously wrong).

A single organ donor can save 5+ lives and also vision via corneas, and skin for burn victims. It is a tremendous gift and a beautiful way to salvage some good from frequently tragic circumstances (typically involving motor vehicle or other mechanical trauma, or drug overdoses as the cause of death).

I hope it is not your loved one who is deprived of a life saving organ transplant because of the fraudulent, self-promoting, antiscience influencers who are the real bandits and villians.

[Anonymous]

As for the article, unfortunately all these screwups occurred at what sound like backwater regional or local hospitals in places that don’t seem to understand the criteria or procedures fully. They should not be accredited in the procedure. Look at the places: Alabama, Kentucky, West Virginia, New Mexico, etc. these are runky dink hospitals out of their depth and the real story here is about the massacre disparities in care between better urban and university hospitals vs often crummy little local options.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As for the article, unfortunately all these screwups occurred at what sound like backwater regional or local hospitals in places that don’t seem to understand the criteria or procedures fully. They should not be accredited in the procedure. Look at the places: Alabama, Kentucky, West Virginia, New Mexico, etc. these are runky dink hospitals out of their depth and the real story here is about the massacre disparities in care between better urban and university hospitals vs often crummy little local options.

“Don’t worry this only happens to red state poors” as an argument isn’t persuasive. If anything you just made me even more glad I removed my name.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As for the article, unfortunately all these screwups occurred at what sound like backwater regional or local hospitals in places that don’t seem to understand the criteria or procedures fully. They should not be accredited in the procedure. Look at the places: Alabama, Kentucky, West Virginia, New Mexico, etc. these are runky dink hospitals out of their depth and the real story here is about the massacre disparities in care between better urban and university hospitals vs often crummy little local options.

I agree with you, but that doesn't make people feel safer about being donors. We can't all be near sophisticated hospitals all the time: even if we dont live in little towns, we travel there for all sorts of reasons. Whatever the solution is has to work at all hospitals.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’ve participated in dozens of organ donations and harvests mostly through Gift of Life and have never, ever seen someone even remotely under treated or prematurely disconnected because someone else needed their organs.

Far more often someone who wished to donate is prevented from donating by some rule or timing issue.

I’m a donor and will remain one.

-physician

"I make money from harvesting organs! I have never, in my opinion, ever under treated anyone or prematurely disconnected anyone! Of course, that depends on your definition of death ..."

This just shows your ignorance. I’m the PP physician, and have never made a penny from an organ donation nor has any doctor I have ever worked with. First of all, it’s ILLEGAL to sell organs. Hence the word, DONATION. Secondly, academic doctors like me do not get paid on a per patient basis (and if we did there would be more money in keeping people alive than in declaring them dead), we are annually salaried not incentivized by individual cases. Third, brain death is legal death in all 50 states. Determining brain death is a medical reality not a matter of spin or opinion. Declaring someone brain dead who you know is not is tantamount to premeditated murder. Stop making facetious jokes about it.

I assume those involved here will get attempted murder charges:

https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2024/10/16/nx-s1-5113976/organ-transplantion-mistake-brain-dead-surgery-still-alive

[Anonymous]

Wait a minute. Her heart was beating because she had to be on a ventilator, that’s standard of care for a brain dead person. So of course she was “breathing”. The question should be: was she brain dead? That is a very regulated and absolute declaration involving multiple doctors, criteria, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wait a minute. Her heart was beating because she had to be on a ventilator, that’s standard of care for a brain dead person. So of course she was “breathing”. The question should be: was she brain dead? That is a very regulated and absolute declaration involving multiple doctors, criteria, etc.

I don’t think the article is about brain dead people. It’s about people who may not quite be brain dead, but are nonetheless profoundly comatose with no hope of meaningful recovery, whose surrogate decision makers (usually family members) agree to withdraw life support and let them die. Apparently some people in bumblf@ck locations don’t understand how to make that assessment and that’s the problem. They should not be permitted to participate in these sorts of donations. For the system to work, IMO it needs to err on the side of “no,” even if that means an organ shortage like we have now, because the entire system (even for brain dead people who are not even the ones the article is about, which is lost on readers here), depends on people’s faith that the donation will only occur in the correct circumstances. It would be an absolute tragedy for the organs of brain dead people not to be donated just because of a handful of errors among the beating-heart donors.

Unfortunately this is a really terrible topic for a magazine article because readers do not have and the article did not provide the medical background to draw the right conclusions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As for the article, unfortunately all these screwups occurred at what sound like backwater regional or local hospitals in places that don’t seem to understand the criteria or procedures fully. They should not be accredited in the procedure. Look at the places: Alabama, Kentucky, West Virginia, New Mexico, etc. these are runky dink hospitals out of their depth and the real story here is about the massacre disparities in care between better urban and university hospitals vs often crummy little local options.

“Don’t worry this only happens to red state poors” as an argument isn’t persuasive. If anything you just made me even more glad I removed my name.

Hope you never need an organ. Karma sucks.