Dead mother incubator

[Aliantha]

Thanks Merc, that was helpful for me at least. I had no idea that people on life support had to have other drugs as well as ventilation.

[TheMercenary]

Here is a comment from someone who is involved in organ harvest, not me.

"We do about one per week at my institution. Each harvest is a bit different, depending on the hemodynamic stability of the donor and the organs being harvested. Often these patients are on dopamine, dobutamine, epinepherine, neosynepherine, nipride, nitro, beta blockers, or any other vasoactive/cardioactive gtt you can think of. Preservation of the kidneys and the heart require specific protocols for each. Since most are head injuries, increased intracranial pressure and specific affected brain tissue can cause a host of hemodynamic and physiologic difficulties. Many are trauma patients requiring continued resucitation with blood products.
Anesthetic agents are most oftened tailored to hemodynamic response desired to maitain organ perfusion. Muscle relaxants facilitate a relaxed surgical field for greater access. Often there are multiple surgical teams, one for each organ type. The heart is stopped in a similar manner as in open heart surgery with bypass. Once the heart stops, anesthesia is done, the monitors and the machine are all turned off and the heart is harvested (snip, snip...pretty quick). The final harvest for bone tissue, corneas and skin takes place after this."

[Aliantha]

The way I see it, it's not even a matter of organ donation. It's that the drugs used to keep the other organs functioning normally could be harmful to the baby over time.

[DanaC]

Well, not the end of the world End Times... but somewhere a trash dump caught fire. And somewhere else, somebody dropped a full bottle of wine.

That sounds like something from a Pratchett book