Brain Death or permission to take organs

  I'm reading "Reaching Down the Rabbit Hole: A Renowned Neurologist Explains the Mystery and Drama of Brain Disease" by Allan H. Ropper, Brian David Burrell and wanted to share this quote with you.

"Committee accomplished was to find a good reason not to utilize resources on people who would unquestionably die without ever regaining consciousness. Being able to change their classification and call them dead had virtue for society. They said, in effect, “It’s not living if your brain is irrevocably gone; it’s not living, so you can go ahead and take the organs.” They had a clear mandate to protect the physician. They recommended, for example, that the patient be declared dead before the respirator is disconnected, so as to avoid the appearance of pulling the plug on a living person. They also recommended that any physicians involved in transplanting the organs recuse themselves from the decision process. But they were guided by practical motives, not strictly scientific ones, and the legacy of the Beecher Committee and the Presidential Commission have now trapped us. What somebody needed to say was: we’re going to have a societal shift, and if your brain is so irrevocably and totally damaged that there is no hope of recovery, and it’s total (so that there won’t be any quibbling), then the patient is in a state where it is reasonable to do organ transplants. Calling it death was the problem."

Start reading this book for free: https://a.co/hM0e1Om