http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=2706

http://www.cfnews.org/ByrneInterview.htm

http://catholicinsight.com/online/features/article_935.shtml

If organs are only supposed to be taken from "dead" donors, when is a patient "dead? What is the line between life and death? The dividing line between life and death will most likely never be fully agreed upon. The line must be drawn on a percise and fine space where the donor is "dead" and the organs are still viable.

1968~Harvard founded a committee to define the term "brain-dead" so that vital organs could be taken from a person who was not "Really Dead".

Transplants may be done with:

• A patient that has been declared "brain dead"
• A patient that was declared to have suffered a "cardiac death"

The moral status of both of these is questionable at best.