Doctors in a hospital in Bremen had already made an incision when they discovered that a deceased donor was still alive

The phrase “not completely brain dead”, like “not completely pregnant”, has a Monty Python-esque ring to it. But it is the way the Daily Mail described an alarming organ transplant incident in the German city of Bremen.

Doctors in a hospital in Bremen had already made an incision in the abdomen of a man who was presumed to be dead when they discovered that the deceased donor was still alive according to organ transplant protocols. The operation was immediately terminated – and the brain-damaged patient died. The incident is being investigated by the German Medical Association.

The Süddeutsche Zeitung (the source for the Daily Mail) was told that “it is quite possible that the man’s brain was so damaged that he would not have been able to return to a normal life, but as long as he was not properly diagnosed as brain dead, nobody knows.”

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Michael Cook

Michael Cook edits BioEdge, a bioethics newsletter, and MercatorNet, an on-line magazine whose focus is human dignity. He writes from Sydney, Australia.

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