This is an old revision of the document!
Table of Contents
Then god seperated the state from the church
Secularization
Issues of their times
Jehovah's Witlesses
Christianity
Science
Woman
Overton Window
Malcolm X
We're not burning witches anymore, so we are secular
Misogyny
Incest
Ableism
Pedophilia
Arrogance
Man or Bear?
If Buying isn't Owning, then Pirating isn't Stealing
Slashed Zero
Self-Censoring
Medicine/Humans/Sensitivities/
Organ Donation
Organ donation is the process of giving authorization to healthcare providers to remove one or more of one's organs and transplant it to someone else who needs that kind of organ to live. In the overwhelming number of cases, this is done after someone's death if they have declared consent during lifetime, though certian organs (like a [one] kidney, a piece of the liver, and certain other organs and tissues) can be donated while still alive. This page will focus on posthum organ donation.
Like a car, the human body is made of parts which are, in many respects, largely interchangeable. While the human body hasn't evolved to be modular, advances in medicine have made it possible to replace many parts in a functional and healthy state despite the difficulties. Humans die when one or more life-supporting parts have failed. However, in most cases many other parts of the body stay intact and would work just fine if the rest of the body wasn't, yknow, dead. Like after a car crash, the wreckage can be harvested for parts that are still intact and may be useful elsewhere. In fact, you'd be surprised how much of a human can still be useful to someone else.
As explained, this process typically happens when a person has died, since at that point the person no longer exists and their body has no use of its components. The exception here is, for example, one kidney, as a person can live just fine with just one kidney instead of the two that most come with out of the factory1).
Process
An organ donation begins with the person's death certificate. When rescued from, say, a scene of an accident, a person is admitted to the hospital where they will receive the full breadth of the nation's emergency medicine care where possible. At this point, nobody is looking or even thinking about the person's organ donor status. In many countries, doctors work to save patients until brain death, as brain death is entirely irreversible and the gold standard in modern medicine. Clinical death involves the stopping of both lung and heart activity, but using resuscitation it is possible to restart either in the right conditions. Clinical death, if prolonged and if the person is not supported by a heart-lung machine ('life support'), leads to brain death.
This is a whole philosophical field about death and how to define it, but for medical purposes it is good enough to know that we think because of neurons and brain cells. When these die, the foundation of what enables us to feel, think and experience things, is destroyed2). If this state is reached, doctors will cease life-saving efforts. This happens thousands of times a day and is entirely normal. If in the future brain death somehow became reversible, a new line will be determined by when doctors will stop trying.
The point is, once a person is brain dead, they will not be helped anymore. Nothing in our current medicine will bring them back, noone ever has come back from brain death3), this is the point by which nobody, including any Doctor on Earth, will help them anymore. They're dead. Now, a death certificate is issued and only now will the person be checked for donation status. If they consented to donation, they will be brought to a different team that handles the harvesting. The doctors who originally tried to save you are never aware of your donation status and wouldn't care either way, as they have no incentive for you to die. These doctors in the emergency department have long, illustruous careers in medicine, having went through the entire medical system and whose career depends on them having a good safety record.