This is the part that terrified me: "Here's the weird part. If you fail the apnea test, your respirator is reconnected. You will begin to breathe again, your heart pumping blood, keeping the organs fresh. Doctors like to say that, at this point, the "person" has departed the body. You will now be called a BHC, or beating-heart cadaver."

"What if there is sound evidence that you are alive after being declared brain dead? In a 1999 article in the peer-reviewed journal Anesthesiology, Gail A. Van Norman, a professor of anesthesiology at the University of Washington, reported a case in which a 30-year-old patient with severe head trauma began breathing spontaneously after being declared brain dead. The physicians said that, because there was no chance of recovery, he could still be considered dead. The harvest proceeded over the objections of the anesthesiologist, who saw the donor move, and then react to the scalpel with hypertension."

While the donation of organs is a noble cause, articles like that make me question of under this noble cause, so seriously questionable behaviors have sprung up. In the end, this seems like a deeply personal decision and trying to pressure someone into making it is very questionable, but then again, it wouldn't be the first or last time another human has tried to impose their ethics on to someone else...

That article has a lot of "what if" in order to "raise questions" but seems to mainly rely on people's lack of scientific knowledge to make its point. Just because the body moved or had hypertension after a scalpel cut does not mean it was not dead.

I'm not saying I know which one it was, but I trust a doctor more than Dick Teresi for the Wall Street Journal.

In that position a medical staff that is going to do that is as likely to stop treatment anyway at that point, so it is still just a choice between dead and donated or just dead - so it isn't really something that should affect your choice. Heck, a doctor that will ignore reason in that situation might even take organs from non-donors, so not being a registered donor is not going to save you from anything really.

I've been an organ donor since I turned 18. I have increasing concerns about the financial incentives within the industry.

For more detail see Science Journalist Dick Teresi on Book TV discussing "The Undead."

http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/305225-1

NPR story on the ethics and changing definition of death: http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/03/27/149463045/a-strug...

NPR Fresh Air interview with Dick Teresi, who wrote the WSJ article you linked: http://www.npr.org/2012/03/19/148296627/blurring-the-line-be...