No - that is absurd and would be against the doctor's oath.

It's interesting that you ask this question. I just saw an episode of Law & Order where a doctor was accused of doing just that. I wonder if you saw the same episode.... The answer to your question is that no hospital or doctor considers this a practice that they follow. However, there have been plenty of documented cases where doctors have encouraged the termination of life-support for terminally ill patients so that their organs can be used to save a life. That being said, it seems to me that there could be a lot of cases that aren't documented where the need for an organ translplant plays a role in a doctors decision. I know that this is probably a controversial issue to some, but I imagine that most of us can fathom a situation where this would be a hard call to make. Again, I don't imagine you will ever find a doctor that admits to this thought process... Law & Order summed it up best: If you don't want to risk it, think twice before filling out your donor card.

If even half of what you saw on TV were true, we'd all have flying cars by now, mental telepathy would replace cell phones, and transporters would be the desired mode of transportation. It's called a work of "fiction" for a reason, and is also why they have those little legal disclaimers at the end of show, reminding people that it IS a fictious show. Sometimes, it obviously doesn't work.

It's definitely not outside the realm of possibility. To say that hospitals do this in general would be incorrect. It's not a generally accepted 'policy' of hospitals to do this. Does this ever happen? It seems quite a few people believe so, as evidenced by all the lawsuits over this very issue. I think the philosophical question here is when is dead, truly dead? After brain death? When the heart stops? When their brains are so liquified that no trace of their personality remains? The Medical community says it's after brain death. In Australia, there was an incidence of a medical facility artificially sustaining a dead man's heart beat after brain death in order to keep the organs fresh until they had found organ recipients. Since brain death had occurred, he was declared officially dead. After he "died", the hospital simply kept his circulatory system going to buy time to find suitable recipients for the organs. The family of this person doesn't consider brain death as the final death. After his organs were harvested, the doctors took him off the machines and let the rest of his body die. The family sees this as murder because, to them, he wasn't truly dead yet and the facility did not do all they could to sustain his life after brain death. So, in their minds, the facility did not try to save this man's life, instead they grabbed his organs and then pulled the plug. Here's the link (See third article down called "Life and Death"): http://cureltd.blogspot.com/2004_10_01_cureltd_archive.html If you have a software for pdf files, then please see the link below as well. It's a New York Times article from 1997 about a Cleveland prosecuter accusing a nationally renowned medical center of seeking to hasten the death of terminally ill patients to obtain their organs for transplant. http://faculty.smu.edu/tmayo/nhbd.pdf On one hand you have people who have differing ideas of when death occurs, on the other, you have hospitals making big money from organ transplant operations (one body can generate multiple operations). To ask if it's true that hospitals won't try as hard to save an organ donor is too general a question. It's true that it has happened before, and, it will probably happen again. But to say it is true of all hospitals is incorrect. That would be judging the whole by the actions of a few. All you can really do is to make sure your emergency contacts know what you want done in the event you are unable to speak for yourself. That, and, maybe passing legislation that makes the whole organ business a not-for-profit concern?

KCTrey's answer was quite a bit more balanced and thoughtful than the comments it drew would leave you to believe. Yeah, anybody referring to anything on TV when ostensibly talking about reality is offputting, but leave that and real questions remain. It's understandable that we would rather the questions weren't there, but merely howling down anyone who points to them won't make them go away. Official policy (including the Hippocratic oath) is one thing. How human beings actually function is another.

Putting aside opinions and television shows, let's look at the reality of the situation. Firstly, if you are injured or suddenly critically ill, there's a strong chance the doctors working on you won't even know if you're an organ donor. They'll be too busy devoting their time and energy to stopping the bleeding to root through your pockets looking for donor cards. Once a positive ID has been made--and this is often done by a friend or relative at the scene--there is no immediate need to look for your identification. The question of donating your organs--and looking for the card--will only be raised *after* all attempts to save your life have been tried and failed and brain death has been declared. Secondly, in most states, doctors must ask your family's permission before donating your organs. Yes, even if you've signed a donor card, your family must consent to the donation. (This is why it's so important for your family to be aware of your wishes.) Most hospitals have policies in place that doctors are not allowed to even raise the question of donating organs until after all life-saving measures have been tried and failed. So what would happen if they let you die, and afterward, your family refused to consent to donation? In essence, they would have murdered you for absolutely no reason. Very few doctors (very few human beings!) would risk that. Third, the doctors trying to save your life are not the same doctors that will later harvest your donated organs. The doctors who will be trying to save your life will have a vested interest in keeping *you* alive. I strongly, strongly, strongly encourage you to visit this website: http://www.cnn.com/HEALTH/library/FL/00077.html CNN has compiled a list of common myths about donations (including this one) and the realities that disprove them. Please check it out. More websites related to organ donation myths: http://www.organdonor.gov/myth.html http://health.discovery.com/convergence/giftoflife/myths/myths.html http://www.unos.org/news/myths.asp While Law & Order is an interesting TV show... it's also fictional and full of ridiculous, nonsensical, sensational plots. Remember the kidney-snatchers episode? How about the one where the reality TV show producers encouraged one teenager to throw another one off the roof of a building? Would you take those as fact too just because you saw them on TV?

The very notion itself contains the answer. Turn it around and ask yourself this: if you were a patient in need of an organ transplant, could you really expect the medical personnel to go compromise or end the life of an otherwise viable patient just to save YOU? Why should they? (that's not to mention the risk of their own careers, scandal and possible prison time if it were discovered). Kavorkian got sent up the river just for "helping" in the ending of lives of terminal consenting patients. Can you imagine what would happen if a physician did such a thing as what you ask?

Okay. I have been reading everything in this thread, and I'd like to go on the defensive for a minute... First, I hope I didn't give the impression that I thought this was right or wrong, just what I believe to be true. Also, I mentioned Law & Order just to reference where the question must have come from, not because I treat it as gospel... Now, for my real answer, which I should have given at first... See the following pages for reference: http://www.nationalreview.com/smithw/smith200410200849.asp http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/06/09/IN124156.DTL http://www.jessekoochin.com/page2.html It does seem quite ridiculous that we live in a society where people acutally contemplate letting others die so that their organs can save another life...but we do. The first link points out how many bioethic experts (the people who actually decide what a doctor is allowed to do) think that harvesting organs from a "not-dead-yet" person is okay. See the paragraph that states that: "The real danger to public confidence, not to mention the morality and ethics of medicine, lies in the growing advocacy to permit devastated and dying patients to be killed for their organs. Such a radical policy shift would not only shatter the public's willingness to sign organ-donation cards, but worse, it would turn would-be organ sources into commodities, reducing them from the status of fully human persons to mere harvestable natural resources." The other 2 links are just a little information about where we are as a society in regard to this issue. We are definitely at a point where decisions made in the next few years might drastically change the answers to this question. So, to answer the question as best as possible... Is it true that a hospital won't try as hard to save someone who has signed up to be an organ donor? NO Has it happened? YES Might it happen again? If there are that many people who believe that it would be ethical, why would we ever assume that it is impossible.

I believe that is something people say as a reason for not wanting to be an organ donor, or if they don't want someone close to them to be one. The people who make lawsuits are people who are upset that there loved one was unable to be saved. Or if they believe that the surgeon or the ER physician and staff didn't try hard enough. I am a complete organ donor, I am very proud to be one. I think that its something to be proud of ... Your not only saving someones life who would of otherwised died, but your giving others a better life. Such as burn victims who can use your skin ... so that they don't have to look in the morrior everyday with burns on them or be pointed at.. Those people shouldn't have to be humilated or ashamned for something that wasn't there fault. Plus whats every left over can be used for medical research to try and better understand diseases and the human body all together. Which in time although your not on this planet you still are. You've given the greatest gifts... People life who would of died.. a better quality of life.. and maybe one of the many who contributed to a cure for a disease. I myself suffer from crohns disease which is heretitary, theres no cure yet. Because people don't know much about this disease or the severity of it. There may not even be a cure in my lifetime for it. I have two children and they have a chance of suffering from this disease too. My greatest prayer is that me being apart of research to cure this disease will not only help my babies... but the other hundred of thousands of people who have been diagnosed or who just don't know what they're suffering from. If your worried about being an organ donor , you shouldn't be those in the medical field take the hypocratical oath to go to the furthest extent and measures to save someones life. If your still not convinced .. stop at your local hospital and fill out a living will form. You will beable to choose what extent you want the hospital to take in saving your life when the time comes. Such as if you stop breathing do you want the physicians to go to the furthest extent in making your heart start beating. If you neeed oxygen , do you want it. Or if your decleared brain dead.. Do you want to be put on resporator and for how long? The oath that they take is that they will go to what extent you want and to give you the best quaity of life possible, and to simply try there hardest to save your life when it needs saved. They are not going to kill one patient to save another one. In most cases those families who sue are for the reasons up top, or because they don't want to go by what was written in that individuals living will.. or that individual never took the time or was informed about this choice and they have to go by what the closest relative said there wishes were. So I encourage everyone unless it goes against your religous belief to be a complete organ donor. I mean what else are you going to use your body for when you die.. You either get burrried and eaten by worms and other insects. YUK! Or you get cremated and someone has to look at that as a constant reminder that your gone forever. Give life.. please!

Of course not! Anyway, even if you were signed up to be an organ donor, your family could still refuse to donate your organs if you would die. Don't let something like that stop you from becoming a donor, you could save someone's life.

In the Australian case as above, if the person was already brain dead and the medics had revived the person, what good is a dead brain person whom is a vegie, good for. Better to help several other brain alive people to live, then one dead person taking up space.

if anything, medical personnel sometimes try HARDER on these patients because their organs can be used to save many MORE lives. Once someone is considered "brain dead" ie. flat EEG, the body will be kept viable til all organs can be procured. This takes up a valuable hospital bed that could be used for someone else.