Suicide
People committing suicide have a higher rate of donating organs than average. One reason is lower negative response or refusal rate by the family and relatives, but the explanation for this remains to be clarified. In addition, donation consent is higher than average from people committing suicide.
Attempted suicide is a common cause of brain death (3.8%), mainly among young men. Organ donation is more common in this group compared to other causes of death. Brain death may result in legal death, but still with the heart beating, and with mechanical ventilation all other vital organs may be kept completely alive and functional, providing optimal opportunities for organ transplantation.
Read more about this topic: Organ Donation
Famous quotes containing the word suicide:
“However great a man’s fear of life, suicide remains the courageous act, the clear-headed act of a mathematician. The suicide has judged by the laws of chance—so many odds against one that to live will be more miserable than to die. His sense of mathematics is greater than his sense of survival. But think how a sense of survival must clamour to be heard at the last moment, what excuses it must present of a totally unscientific nature.”
—Graham Greene (1904–1991)
“There is no refuge from confession but suicide, and suicide is confession.”
—Daniel Webster (1782–1852)
“Most of the folktales dealing with the Indians are lurid and romantic. The story of the Indian lovers who were refused permission to wed and committed suicide is common to many places. Local residents point out cliffs where Indian maidens leaped to their death until it would seem that the first duty of all Indian girls was to jump off cliffs.”
—For the State of Iowa, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)