More and more hospitals are declaring patients “brain dead” even though their circulation systems are still functioning.

Organs from deceased donors Donations after brain death account for about half of kidney transplants, more than three-quarters of liver transplants, over 90 per cent of pancreas and lung ...

Dr. Andreas Kramer, medical director of the Southern Alberta organ donation program, says NDD, or "brain death" cases, still account for the majority of donations, but DCD is catching up.

The biological age of one organ - the brain - plays an outsized role in determining how long you have left to live, Wyss-Coray said. "The brain is the gatekeeper of longevity," he said.

The brain-dead and recently deceased could theoretically be sustained on ventilators, to keep the bodies “warm, respiring, pulsating,” one researcher wrote nearly half a century ago.

Ryan Marlow, from North Carolina, US, was pronounced brain dead by doctors - but somehow showed neurological activity just moments before his organs were harvested for donation Ryan Marlow spent ...