Doctors Were Preparing to Remove Their Organs. Then They Woke Up.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/06/us/kentucky-organ-donations.html

by mitchbob • 1 year ago

45 23 1 year ago

mitchbob• 1 year ago

delichon• 1 year ago

Along with the good it can do, people should be made aware of these stories before signing up to be an organ donor. Otherwise the consent isn't truly informed.

jsutter909• 1 year ago

Another point for the Charlie Munger maxim, "show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome"

triceratops3• 1 year ago

What's the incentive? The hospital gets paid for keeping patients on life support too, right?

senkora• 1 year ago

The Organ Procurement Organizations are separate entities and have their own incentives. It’s their representatives who are pushing for organ retrieval in dubious cases.

nitwit005• 1 year ago

If incentives rule, you should never, ever, under any circumstance, seek medical treatment.

The incentive is to make everyone who shows up at the hospital maximally sick, ideally with illnesses that require as many tests and treatments and possible.

You can't trust your friends or family either. The hospital may have paid them to try to convince you.

opwieurposiu• 1 year ago

Are you really dead if some of your organs are living on in someone else's body?

Seems like you would only be "Mostly Dead"

mock-possum• 1 year ago

Unless we’re talking about the brain and central the nervous system, your organs aren’t you, they’re yours

onecommentman• 1 year ago

You’re just making a guess about that — or so says my pineal gland, thymus gland, heart, solar plexus, adrenal glands, etc.. The brain and nervous system is just the spokesorgan for a carnival of bioenergetic centers that makes Stock Exchanges and Sports events look staid in comparison. You may think your brain is the boss, but what was the organ that made you think that? Your brain may have selfish interests in making you believe it is your essence — due diligence is called for.

triceratops3• 1 year ago

The surprising thing I learned from this article is a lot of the would-be donors were dying or presumed dead from overdoses. I always thought drug use would taint the organs and make them useless for donation.

pinewurst• 1 year ago

Is donor cause of death disclosed to the organ recipients and/or their medical providers?

foxyv• 1 year ago

Most opioids do not damage organs. They typically just change our central nervous systems and suppress breathing which is how they ultimately kill. The brain will die long before organs during oxygen depravation.

Alcohol, amphetamines, and other drugs do in fact damage organs before they kill but opioids do not unless they also contain something like Tylenol which is a liver toxin.

SuperNinKenDo2• 1 year ago

When you consider the growing evidence that we've seen over the years that apparently unresponsive people can be fully aware of their surroundings, this is truly terrifying.

From some of the remarks at the end of the article one really statts to wonder how much survivorship bias there is here... How many procedures went forward despite the medical professionals in the room being uncomfortable...

tredre3• 1 year ago

When you consider the growing evidence that we've seen over the years that apparently unresponsive people can be fully aware of their surroundings, this is truly terrifying.

We're also seeing growing evidence that a fair amount of people regain consciousness under general anaesthesia (but remain fully paralyzed), despite the common wisdom putting it as much less than 1%. What is uncommon is to remember it afterwards, because the drugs cocktail prevents memory formation.

https://www.sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2022/05/24/durin...

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/sep/10/surgery-pati...

tomatotomato37• 1 year ago

I've heard in some lighter procedures (think bone setting or dental work) just an amnesic drug is given as apparently not biologically encoding/remembering a traumatic event seems to produce just as good an outlook as blocking the tramua through unconsciousness/painkillers

ninininino• 1 year ago

I woke up during my wisdom teeth extraction and remember the sound of crunching as they hammered or chiseled or something but luckily I couldn't feel anything or don't remember pain, just psychological distress. Googling the experience it appears to be a fairly common thing enough to read similar stories.

In my opinion, it would be a good idea to explain to a patient what is going to happen so if they do wake up they can know what is going on and be less alarmed by the procedure.

dmitrygr• 1 year ago

This is why I will never be an organ donor and watch the news of successful xenotransplants with excitement.

exe34• 1 year ago

I'd be pretty pissed to get this close to not having to wake up and then they bungle it up. Now I have to go back to work and pay taxes.

bookofjoe• 1 year ago

https://archive.ph/ddtuc

Doctors Were Preparing to Remove Their Organs. Then They Woke Up.

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