All your livers belong to us!

[Gilrandir]

Presumably they would do what they do now, allow them a minute or two to mourn before wheeling the body to the morgue.

When you are supposed to take something out of the body, minutes are too precious to waste. So my picture of mourning relatives and a doctor patting their shoulder from behind or impatiently tapping his foot a yard away seems credible.

[Greyblades]

My picture is a doctor patiently waiting until the surgeon to finish preparing for surgery on short notice before trying to retrieve the body.

But it's rather a moot point as the emotional distress is unlikely to be anywhere near as significant as the lives saved. Besides getting the body out of the reach of an irrational relative is unlikely to get any easier whether or not they have a minute.

[Montmorency]

Gil, I don't get your complaint. Cardiac death is the baseline for organ removal.

That's why there are so few organs available for transplant - as you say, time is of the essence, so an individual typically needs to die within the hospital.

These are not acute cases - no relatives are waiting for any hearts to be jumpstarted, which is almost never done in any cases anyway.

[Greyblades]

I think Gil is imagining the usual Hollywood scene of a man dying in a hospital bed surrounded by grieving relatives, and he predicts they'd probably react badly if the hospital confiscates the body immediately after death.

[Gilrandir]

I think Gil is imagining the usual Hollywood scene of a man dying in a hospital bed surrounded by grieving relatives, and he predicts they'd probably react badly if the hospital confiscates the body immediately after death.

I don't think it's entirely Hollywood picture. I've seen something like that, I can assure you that donating the body of the one they love (especially if this is not an old person who has been on the deathbed for quite a time so his family are kind of ready for the end to come but a young man whose death (e.g. in a carcrash) was a shock) to save someone else's life is the last thing the relatives are thinking about at the moment and they really can be distressed (to put it mildly) if there is a surgeon "whetting his scalpel" waiting for his turn to come.

[Montmorency]

You still don't seem to understand how the process works fundamentally.

You don't just go ahead and remove one or more organs from a cadaver until:

1. Full medical history has been obtained and reviewed.
2. The health of each organ has been assessed on the spot.
3. The wait-list for organ-transplant is cross-referenced to determine the best match.

With the image you have in mind, haven't you ever wondered how there isn't a massive glut in spare organs?

Even without the issue of consent, it's an extremely-complicated process. You might also notice that the black-market trade in organs is not actually all that big? Why is this? Because regardless of the conditions under which the organs are collected, without extensive consultation over the medical histories and innate biomarkers of the donor and recipient, the risk of transplant failure and host death is dramatically higher - no matter how much money you have.

[Beskar]

Gilrandir, you definitely have an over-active imagination or you lived in one of the most morally depraved places in the world if you ever think healthcare service is like that.