Donors for Organ Transplants

To the Editor:—  American surgeons, in the selection and procurement of donors for organ transplants prefer donors (1) who have had complete cessation of central nervous system activity, (2) who are medically and legally dead, but (3) have continuing activity of the heart and circulation. This has quite naturally raised the dilemma of just when the donor patient is dead beyond moral or legal qualm.The French have the world's most perfect solution to this problem. The guillotine, which still exists in France, provides a donor in whom the precise instant at which cerebral function ceases is beyond doubt. Nor is there any possibility of restoration unless whole head transplant techniques improve. Tissues from such donors are maximally viable and any number of organs are ideally suitable for transplant. Donor and recipient could even be carefully matched in advance of the event which permits this generous contribution to surgical triumph.