© OrganFacts.net

The Nasty Side of Organ Transplanting.

Chapter 18

Terminology and Gender Donor Rates

Reduced Status of Intending Donors

The body parts industry developed a new language to disguise the fact they were cutting up patients still showing signs of life. They solved the problem by reducing the donor patients’ status to heart-beating cadaver much sooner than for non-donor patients.

When an organ-retaining patient dies hospital staff treat that patient’s body with continued respect first designating it as the deceased. As the cooling body becomes less human and loosens its bowels it’s called a corpse. When the stiffness of rigor mortis sets in the status is reduced to cadaver, something absolutely dead.

The status of a dying organ donor descends much quicker. Despite the patient making a magnificent final gesture, transplant coordinators label him or her as the “heart-beating cadaver” immediately “brain death” is declared. This “cadaver” status is used despite the body staying warm, soft, pink, moist, and retaining a beating heart and some brain activity and function.

An organ retainer in the same condition would still be treated as alive: washed, fed and talked to by nurses and doctors. But surgical staff need to delude themselves, for their own psychological well being, that the donor patient is stone cold dead.

Refusal to Differentiate Between Cardiac Dead and “Brain Dead” Donors

Donor Agencies sensed the danger of people differentiating between “cardiac dead” and “brain dead” donors. People would see that one appears less dead than the other. So they adopted the “Dead Donor” term that describes either a completely dead patient or a “brain dead” human. The term, “Living Donor", was restricted to those walking around and expected to remain alive after the donation. These definitions were formulated to avoid the obvious fact that there is little similarity between being a “brain dead” person and a cold corpse.

The criteria for determining “brain death” have become secondary to who wants the body and for what purpose. When the patient’s body is wanted by harvesters they adopt a descending logic that goes like this:  Loss of function = loss of ability to function = brain dead = really dead. In mathematics this illogic would appear like 4=3=2=1.

In determining this descent, “Doctor’s Orders” no longer refers to “staying in bed and drinking plenty of fluid", but that the patient is dead because the doctor says so. “Doctor’s Orders” determine if the donor retains human rights or is treated as “the cadaver”.

The word “homograft” is used in Australia to define a transplanted body part while Americans prefer the word “allograft”. Homo means homosexual in the United States and they don't want people to think the body parts come from homosexuals. They might be derived from that source but not specifically.

Ethnic Origin of Donors in Australia

192 of 204 “brain dead” donors in Australia in 2005 were Caucasoid and of these just two were Greek and Italian.^[112]"Brain dead” organ donation is a “white folk” thing.

Below is a table showing the male/female ratio of brain-dead donors.

Like many trades and professions transplant promoters develop euphemisms to mask the graphic aspects of their business from the public. Below is a small sample.