Not Dead Yet

While organ donation is obviously a wonderful thing in its effects (i.e., saving many lives), I've had serious concerns about the circumstances under which vital organs are or may be obtained, ever since I read the following article several years ago:

Not quite dead? The case for caution in the definition of "brain death"

And today my concerns have been reinforced by this story about a young man who is alive and well today after being declared "brain dead" and being minutes away from having his vital organs removed:

Doctor Says about "Brain Dead" Man Saved from Organ Harvesting - "Brain Death is Never Really Death"

OKLAHOMA, March 27, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - 21-year-old Zack Dunlap, a man who was diagnosed as "brain dead" and who was mere minutes away from having his organs harvested, now says, four months after the accident that brought him to the brink of death, that he feels "pretty good." Dunlap's story was told in an NBC piece aired earlier this week, in which the young man himself was interviewed.

While Zack's case is being touted in the media as a "miracle", a neonatologist and expert on brain-death has told LifeSiteNews.com that Zack's case, while remarkable in a sense, is not as rare as the mainstream media's reporting makes it seem.

"The young man was never dead," said Dr. Paul Byrne, a former president of the Catholic Medical Association who began writing about brain death in 1977. What makes Dunlap's case unusual, though not unheard of, says Byrne, is that Zack was lucky enough to be found out to be alive before his vital organs were removed.

"While the story is put out as something that's miraculous," he told LifeSiteNews, "I don't want to take anything away from God, but it's not supernatural what occurred. If there is anything miraculous about it, it is that they didn't get his organs before someone was able to notice some sort of other response. He was always living - his heart was always beating, there was always blood pressure, he was always very much alive."

Dr. Byrne says that over the years he has collected information pertaining to numerous cases where patients labeled brain dead have "returned from the dead." The reason being, says Byrne, is that "brain death is never really death."

Read the rest of the article here.