• Question: How does organ donation work? If a person is dead and you donate their organs…surely their organs aren’t working?

    Asked by jodiebowey23 to Tim, Damien, Rachael, Simon, Suzi on 19 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by fatlouietwin.
    • Photo: Suzi Gage

      Suzi Gage answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      Hi @jodiebowey23
      This is a great question.

      When a person dies, their body doesn’t start decomposing immediately. This means if you get the organ out quick enough and in to a box of ice, it’s like putting something in the freezer, it doesn’t go off. Because of this it has the potential to be used again. Organs are not ‘alive’ per se, they function as part of your body, so they don’t ‘die’ when a person dies, they only stop functioning, and start to decompose.

      Hope this answers your question 🙂

    • Photo: Damien Hall

      Damien Hall answered on 19 Jun 2011:

      Of course, it is also possible for particular organs within people’s bodies to be diseased, and then those ones really wouldn’t work and you wouldn’t take those out (it’s called harvesting, which I think is a bit gross) for donation. But that wouldn’t mean that non-diseased organs in the same person’s body couldn’t be used if you got them out quickly enough, as Suzi says. There’s a long list of organs that can be donated, and it differs between countries – a list of some organs that can be donated in the UK is here:

      http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/organ-donation/Pages/Introduction.aspx

      So, if someone had died of a disease of the liver, but still had a healthy heart, corneas or other things, then their liver couldn’t be donated, but their other healthy organs could.

      I searched for this on Wikipedia (even scientists do that! Though you then have to look somewhere else too to confirm what you find) and was surprised to find that, in most countries in Europe, people are presumed to want to donate – that means you have to opt out of donating your organs if you don’t want to, and, if you say nothing, they will take your organs for transplant. The UK is different – here, you have to opt in, so, unless you positively say you want to donate, then they won’t take your organs.

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