For many physicians, lack of understanding about brain death leads to confusion and muddles interactions with patients’ loved ones at the end of life.

The DDR requires organ donors to be dead according to legal criteria prior to organ removal, and it’s rooted in fears of civil and criminal liability.

Although organ donation conflicts with self-interest, because donation is vital to the community, interventions to increase it are ethically justified.

Dr Ariane Lewis discusses how we can navigate uncertainty and ambiguity about brain death by understanding clinical criteria for brain death determination and how our approaches to death are culturally and socially situated.

Standards for posttransplant graft/survival rates do not reward transplant centers for performing riskier transplants to increase population benefit.

Social media platforms and organizational websites that facilitate organ procurement should respect potential donors’ autonomy and confidentiality.

The AMA Code of Medical Ethics’ opinions related to organ donors’ informed, voluntary decisions and equitable distribution of organs and tissues.

Organ allocation models that maximize the collective benefit of an organ rely on subjective criteria and might have unintended practical consequences.

Telemedicine is fast becoming a reliable medium for convening ethics deliberations and bringing expert assistance to remote locations.

Current policy requires separate informed consent for some Public Health Service increased-risk donors, and this can make shared decision making harder.