Richard Demme, MD, Professor Emeritus of Medicine & Bioethics, URMC

In the Movie “The Wizard of Oz” the Munchkin Coroner declared that the bad witch was not only “merely dead,” she was “really most sincerely dead.” This suggests there may be different levels of death. Brain death and circulatory death are on a spectrum of death, but may occur at different times. Normothermic Regional Perfusion has been used as a technique to preserve organs for transplant for donation after circulatory death. Some question
whether this violates the Dead Donor Rule, since circulation in the donor is restored. This presentation explores when a person may be “dead enough” to donate organs