BackgroundUndocumented immigrants can donate their organs, but lack access to organ transplantation. This challenges foundational principles of organ donation: fairness and informed consent. Little is known about undocumented immigrants’ knowledge of barriers to their access to organ transplantation or how this might affect their decision to donate their organs.MethodsThe study was performed in an urban, university-affiliated, safety-net hospital. We interviewed hospitalized patients who selfidentified as undocumented immigrants and were unaware of having any contraindication to organ donation (for example, cancer). We (...) first recorded their demographic characteristics and knowledge and attitudes regarding organ donation. We then assessed the effects of informing participants about limits to their access to organ transplants on their willingness to donate.ResultsThis group of 59 uninsured Hispanic immigrants had adequate knowledge about organ donation. Participants were suspicious about inequality within the medical system, but most were willing to donate their organs (74 percent). Most participants (74 percent) were aware that they would have to pay to receive an organ, but they dramatically underestimated the out-of-pocket expenses. Yet willingness to donate their organs was unaffected by participants being explicitly informed of the low likelihood that they would be able to afford to receive an organ transplant.ConclusionsDespite being well informed about the organ donation system, undocumented Hispanic immigrants underestimate the costs and overestimate their likelihood of receiving an organ. Even when they are given this information, they remain willing to donate their own organs. (shrink)

Each time patients and their families are asked to make a decision about resuscitation, they are also asked to engage the political, social, and cultural concerns that have shaped its history. That history is exemplified in the career of Claude S. Beck, arguably the most influential researcher and teacher of resuscitation in the twentieth century. Careful review of Beck’s work discloses that the development and popularization of the techniques of resuscitation proceeded through a multiplication of definitions of death. CPR consequently (...) remains unique among medical treatments, because it is indicated precisely when a person dies, depending always on how each event of death becomes defined practically by patients, families, and medical professionals present at the time. It is therefore as an occasion to manage a surplus of definitions of death, and not as an occasion to determine the physiological efficacy of resuscitation, that one should approach analysis of contemporary challenges in decision-making about resuscitation. (shrink)

Each time patients and their families are asked to make a decision about resuscitation, they are also asked to engage the political, social, and cultural concerns that have shaped its history. That history is exemplified in the career of Claude S. Beck, arguably the most influential researcher and teacher of resuscitation in the twentieth century. Careful review of Beck’s work discloses that the development and popularization of the techniques of resuscitation proceeded through a multiplication of definitions of death. CPR consequently (...) remains unique among medical treatments, because it is indicated precisely when a person dies, depending always on how each event of death becomes defined practically by patients, families, and medical professionals present at the time. It is therefore as an occasion to manage a surplus of definitions of death, and not as an occasion to determine the physiological efficacy of resuscitation, that one should approach analysis of contemporary challenges in decision-making about resuscitation. (shrink)