Donation After Circulatory Death (DCD)
With the ever-growing demand for organs, in the 1990s a new donor pool was “discovered”. People who are not brain dead, but who are at the end of life, may choose to have their support withdrawn in a way that allows quick harvest of their organs when their hearts stop. They are taken to the operating room (or a room nearby), and life support is withdrawn. When the patient’s heartbeat and breathing are noted to have stopped, doctors wait a short time (between 75 seconds to 5 minutes - there is no universal standard) and then the organ harvest is begun.
Resuscitation is still possible
Gruesomely, some centers actually clamp off the arteries to the brain and then perform resuscitation of the rest of the body to keep the organs in good shape.
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Many medical professionals are troubled by this method because they know patients are ROUTINELY resuscitated after 75 seconds to 5 minutes of heart stoppage, and many make a full recovery thereafter. Dr. Ari Joffe, a pediatrician and intensive care specialist has published data showing that patients may spontaneously recover a heartbeat and recover even after ten minutes of heart stoppage. We maintain that since these patients are still well within the timeframe in which resuscitation is possible, the criterion of “irreversible cessation of circulatory function” mandated by the Universal Determination of Death Act has not been fulfilled, and they are not dead. A recent case report of a DCD (donation after circulatory death) patient who began to breath and struggle after being submitted to harvest surgery bears this out. The coroner determined the second death was a homicide.
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In 2008, a 'brain dead' French man received a heart massage for over an hour and a half while transplant surgeons were on their way to keep the blood flow to the rest of his organs, his heart started beating on it's own as the transplant surgery was about to begin.