Organ donation and brain preservation after assisted dying: case report and considerations for a potential pathway

Abstract Protecting life and restoring health have been at the core of the conception of medical care since antiquity, for health professionals and the public alike. Assisted dying represents a practice that appears to challenge this traditional conception. In jurisdictions where assisted dying is condoned, the question remains as to whether the practice should be medicalized or deferred to non-medical actors. Irrespective of the divisive controversy surrounding assisted dying and its medicalization per se, the practice gives rise to high-stakes ethical, legal and organizational challenges when intersecting with organ transplantation, tissue banking, and Structural Brain Preservation or cryonics. In this narrative account, we describe the contextual framework and outline our experience and operational scope for addressing them at a university hospital in Germany. Based on this description we propose a structured pathway for increasing donation and preservation options for terminal patients while retaining ethical integrity and professional accountability.