Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look, and an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth.

For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street.

In a recent guest essay in the New York Times, three medical doctors proposed a solution

for the lack of suitable organs available for transplant in the United States.

Because an estimated 15 people die every day waiting for a transplant,

they said, quote, we need to broaden the definition of death. Their basic argument is that because

the existing medical definition of death is too narrow, good organs are left on the table.

Most organs donated for transplant can only be taken from someone who's clinically

dead, meaning the person's heart has not stopped, or there is no brain activity even when the

heart continues. The crisis, say the authors, is because there are too many viable organs damaged by a lack

of blood flow, and not enough people are dying with an act of heart but a dead

brain. Thus, they argue, and I quote, the solution we believe is to broaden the definition of

brain death to include irreversibly comatose patients on life support. Using this definition,

these patients would be legally dead, regardless of whether a machine

restored the beating of their heart, end quote. In other words, people in so-called irreversible

comas should be considered dead, so that, as long as a person had consented to donate their

organs, and I quote again here, removal could proceed without delay, end quote.

Now, not only are the authors here asking all of us to ignore the countless accounts of miraculous

cases in which people have emerged from comas thought to be irreversible, but also the many cases

in which patients have been rushed to death in order to secure their organs.

And they're also asking us to ignore the movies.

Back in 1978, Michael Crichton, author of Jurassic Park, directed a TV movie called Coma.

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