You Should Take Your Name Off the Organ Donor Registry.
Why and How
Your heart stops. Three minutes pass. Doctors declare you dead. Then they restart your heart. The catch? They've clamped off blood flow to your brain first, ensuring you stay legally "dead" while your organs are kept pristine for harvesting.
This isn't science fiction —it's standard procedure in a growing number of American transplant centers. Most Americans carrying donor cards have no idea this is how their organs might be procured.
It’s called "normothermic regional perfusion with controlled donation after circulatory death" (NRP-cDCD). The sterile clinical terminology obscures a procedure that should shake any person: doctors remove patients from life support, wait a mere 2-3 minutes after the heart stops, then clamp off blood flow to the brain before restarting the heart and other organs.
Let me be clear about what's happening: these patients are not brain-dead when this begins. They are dying, yes, but not yet dead by any reasonable standard. Their hearts are capable of being restarted—as proven by the fact that doctors do restart them moments later. The only difference is that physicians deliberately block blood flow to the brain, artificially creating brain death while preserving the organs they wish to harvest.