X-Message-Number: 2311
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 93 00:52:18 CDT
From: Brian Wowk <>
Subject: CRYONICS PA Law

Kevin Brown:

> I have appended below, with permission, a recent posting to the
> Extropians list by Ray Cromwell concerning a proposed Pennsylvania
> law that would be dangerous to cryonicists....

> PA Official to Alcor: "Gee, I'm sooooo sorry, but, after that car
> accident, his bracelet was so badly damaged we could hardly read it,
> and to ensure freshness of his organs, we had to harvest them immediately.
> Not until now did we have a chance to call you.  You can, of course,
> have the leavings..."  >>>

Ray Cromwell:

>  This is a law being considered in PA. It states that unless you
> specify otherwise, you are presumed to be an organ donor at death.
> I see this as coming into conflict with cryonics -- with the state
> eventually declaring ownership of your organs at death and carving up
> your body....

        Now wait a minute!  Before we all go flying off the handle 
about a law we do not understand, let's make sure we all know how 
organ donation works.  Victims of sudden death or terminal illnesses 
*are not* organ donation candidates.  Transplant surgeons need organs 
with no ischemic time.  In other words, nobody who suffers cardiac 
arrest before legal death is an organ donation candidate.  You must be 
declared legally dead >>> with your heart still beating <<< before you 
can donate organs.

        In practice this means that the only people who donate organs 
are people on respirators who are declared brain dead.  Consider a 
typical scenario: Joe Blow riding his motocycle without a helmet 
crashes and ends up on life support with severe head injuries.  48 
hours later an extensive battery of tests determines that cerebral 
perfusion is zero, and brain stem activity is zero.  Although Joe's 
heart and lungs continue to operate because of the respirator, his 
brain is literally mush.  Joe is declared brain dead (i.e. legally 
dead).

        At another hospital, Joe Smith is dying from liver failure.  
The tissue types of the two Joe's match.  Joe Blow's liver (now 
useless to him) could save Joe Smith's life.  Unfortunately Joe Blow 
never bothered to sign his organ donor card.  Doctors explain the 
situation to Joe Blow's family, and ask for permission to take his 
liver.  The distraught, confused family (who still haven't come to 
terms with Joe's passing) refuse, and Joe Smith *dies* for lack of a 
liver.

        This scenario repeats itself over and over again everyday in 
hospitals all over North America.  I, for one, am sick of it.  Unless 
someone explicity states that they want to take their organs with them 
into the ground and rot, I don't think people should continue dying 
because families in the midst of grief and confusion lose the ability 
to make good decisions.

        Needless to say, I (a cryonicist) have a lot of sympathy for 
the proposed PA law.  This law will not affect cryonicists one bit.  
Remember you have to be brain dead on a respirator for laws like this 
to come into effect.  Cryonicists should never end up brain dead on a 
respirator because their Durable Power of Attorney for Heath Care and 
Medical Surrogate paperwork should specifically prohibit respirator 
support when there is no brain activity (in absence of drugs).  
Finally, and quite frankly, if despite these measures you ever are so 
unfortunate as to end up brain dead on respirator, cryonics will not 
do you one bit of good.

                                                --- Brian Wowk

P.S. Kevin, please post this to the Extropians list. Thanks. [ I did. - KQB ]

[ Brian, thanks for your clarification about how organ donation works.
  I still see a problem, though.  Within the past year or so I spoke
  about organ donation with an emergency room nurse who works in Germany.
  She has seen the organ donation business from the inside, at least in
  Germany, and has seen that potential organ donors do NOT get life-saving
  treatments that they would otherwise get because some life-saving
  treatments can compromise the quality of the organs to be harvested.
  Because of this, she has written in large letters over the back of
  her drivers license that she is NOT an organ donor.  Is the organ
  donation business in Canada and the USA so different than in Germany
  that such a problem never could happen here?  That, I realize, is
  not specifically a cryonics-related issue.
  For cryonicists the main additional issue with "presumed donor" is,
  I think, that it may become too easy to "accidentally" lose a person's
  identification and, especially, that inconvenient cryonics bracelet.
  The Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care and Medical Surrogate
  paperwork will be useless if the organ harvesters arrange matters so
  that the appropriate people are not contacted quickly.  "Hey, we have
  a noname on respirator with some good organs.  Let's get him pronounced
  and carve him up!"  It will be interesting to see how well the proposed
  PA law discourages abuses like that. - KQB ]

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=2311