Many years ago I was reading some historical information about how doctor's began studying this on injured people who were still breathing (long before the modern life saving devices we have.) I really struggle on this issue because I feel there is something inherently wrong with stopping someone's heart so they can be declared dead ... for organ retrieval.
I honestly pray that I'm never in a position with my children where we are hoping for an organ transplant because I'm not certain I'm up to the task.
This article details some of the horrific thoughts I have about Organ Transplants.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/03/AR2008100301974.html
The Doctors Who Are Redefining Life and Death
Think being the next president would be a brutal job? Imagine being a transplant surgeon. You can't tell the parents of a dying kid when to pull the plug, but you have to be there, ready, the minute he expires. You have to wait until he's dead, but not so long that his organs become useless. You can give him drugs to keep his organs healthy, but you mustn't technically revive him. And you can't remove and restart his heart until it's been declared kaput.
Pick up a recent issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, and you'll see the far edge of this tortured world. In the journal, doctors at Children's Hospital in Denver describe how they removed hearts from infants 75 seconds after they stopped. The infants were declared dead of heart failure, even as their hearts, in new bodies, resumed ticking.
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