Merely vs Sincerely Dead: How Donation After Circulatory Death (DCD) as Presently Performed Does Not Follow the Dead Donor Rule (DDR)

All living creatures experience death. In the past, for humans, death has been easy to define. According to the major religions, death occurs when the soul leaves the body. Since when this occurs is unknown and unknowable, religions have left it to science to declare when death occurs physiologically. While the use of technology such as the stethoscope have improved accuracy, resuscitative efforts and scientific study have shown that a person who is legally dead may not be irreversibly dead. There is a movement to change irreversible to permanent, making death a social construct so that organs may be obtained under the Dead Donor Rule. The change has grave consequences both for patients and the medical profession, where patients are seen more as generous organ donors than as vulnerable persons. Donation after Circulatory Death is an example where the merely permanently dying heart is resuscitated, and therefore the donor is not sincerely irreversibly dead, but still alive.