Bring Out Your Dead

New York City is working on plans to have a specialized vehicle collect the recently dead and get them to the hospital quickly. I mean, STAT!

New York City is working on a plan to deploy a special ambulance to collect the bodies of people who have died suddenly from heart attacks, accidents and other emergencies and try to preserve their organs. If the "rapid-organ-recovery ambulance" succeeds, officials would like to expand the unique pilot program citywide with a fleet of ambulances and eventually duplicate it in other cities.

I think I like this idea. I do understand the argument against viewing a dying patient as a minty fresh organ bank, but I think those sort of moral pitfalls could be avoided. In any case, I'm betting that this idea will stimulate some real meaty conversations about medical ethics, which is a good thing.