Friday, June 20, 2008
Nationalized organ collection in action
"I'm not dead yet!"
Monty Python skits of 30 years ago become French medicine today.A man whose heart had stopped beating woke up just as surgeons were about to remove his organs for donation, it was disclosed yesterday.
Doctors in Paris called in transplant surgeons after failing to resuscitate a 45-year old man believed to have suffered a massive heart attack...
When the surgeons began operating on the man to remove his organs, he began to breathe... "After a few weeks chequered with serious complications, the patient is now walking and talking," said the report...
... the case is likely to ignite public debate over ... retrieving organs when the heart stops, which has only been legal in France since last year. Before then a patient had to be declared brain dead before transplant could occur.
France has a so-called opt-out [organ donation] system. This means everyone gives their "presumed consent" to having their organs removed after death unless they have refused permission...
