It is necessary to explain to people what brain death is

In the last ten years 26% of potential organ donors in Brazil for transplantation were excluded from the system by decision of their families. In total, 14 000 families refused to do so and we refer only to cases in which there were brain death, a phenomenon that many people of our country have not yet understood. The data was released in the last 20 days by the Brazilian Association of Organ Transplantation (ABTO)

It is known, according to Brazilian law, only family can authorize the donation and the diagnosis of brain death is essential to make someone a potential donor. It happens that, according to the neurosurgeon Adriano Maeda, responsible for approaching families of potential donors in Cajuru Hospital in Curitiba. Many people do not understand how a person can be dead if the heart is still beating and breathing. "And in doubt, say no to donation."

Years ago, when Brazil was in force in the law that established the alleged donation, a similar phenomenon occurred with the current, but for very different reasons. Part of Catholic families refused to authorize the removal of vital organs needed for transplantation because they believe in doomsday, to verify the resurrection of the body, the organs removed would be missed. Although it is difficult to believe in such news, the fact came to the attention of the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil, who explained to its faithful that the resurrection will not be divulged with the material body, the time and the worms consume, but with the spiritual body, which refers to Paul of Tarsus in one of his epistles.

The difficulties now are the simply result from lack of knowledge of what is brain death; something that could easily be remedied, if the Brazilian authorities should devote themselves to it. Just a tenth of what is spent on campaigns regarding the use of condoms to that in a short time, all over Brazil come to understand why there is no harm in removing organs from a person whose brain death was so incontrovertible proven.

First described in France in the 1950s, brain death means that the vital structures of the brain needed to maintain consciousness and vegetative life, are irreversibly damaged. In simple words, the brain stem does not work, there is no more brain activity and the EEG will show brain electrical silence.
We must not confuse it with a vegetative state, because in this a part of the brain still works, since the injury has reached part of the neurological cells, but not the structures of the brain.

It has been 20 years that the Federal Council of Medicine has established, through Resolution No. 1346, from 1991, that brain death is a final state and irreversible death, that it can be used, no doubt, for the removal of organs for transplants , a step that must be taken while the heart beats irrigating certain organs - such as the heart, kidneys, pancreas and liver - that many people in this country are waiting anxiously to be able to live a little longer and accomplish the task for which they came to do in this world.

Referring to the heart's role in human life, the higher spirits had taught - 154 years ago - that organic life is maintained while the heart circulates the blood in the arteries, "which does not need for the soul," adding that in some cases, as in agony, the soul has left the body, and yet the heart still beats. (The Book of Spirits, item 156.)


Note:

On the importance of organ donation, we encourage those interested to read the editorial published in 156, click http://www.oconsolador.com.br/ano4/156/editorial.htm