At a time when organ donation is universally embraced, the story detailed how a change in the definition of death in Pittsburgh, Penn., in the early 1990s helped increase recovery of some organs by more than 700 percent nationwide during an eight-year period and why the policies that fueled this growth trouble some ethicists and doctors.
The story also described variations in how death is defined around the country and even at different hospitals within Pittsburgh and the pressures to increase organ donation still further, including hospitals’ financial incentives for performing transplant operations.
Judges’ Comments: This provocative story reveals that there is no single definition of death used by the nation’s organ procurement agencies, leaving transplant surgeons and hospitals astride a slippery ethical slope as they push for more organ donors. The reporter deftly navigates the debate and brilliantly anchors the issue, providing readers a rare eyewitness account of the final minutes of a 57-year-old man whose heart is stopped so that he can be an organ donor.
Read “Defining death sparks debate” by Kris B. Mamula.
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