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The cause of William Rardin's death was "removal of his internal organs by an organ recovery team," Montrose County Coroner Mark Young said. He said he did not believe the case should be a criminal matter, but that it "should lead to a clarification of what the accepted standard is."

Young said Montrose Memorial Hospital in Montrose and St. Mary's Hospital in Grand Junction did not follow "accepted medical standards" or meet state guidelines in determining that 31-year-old William Rardin was brain dead after he shot himself last month.

Rardin's heart, liver, pancreas and two kidneys were transplanted into waiting patients.

Officials with St. Mary's and the organization that coordinates organ donation in Colorado and Wyoming insisted the surgeons followed rules and did nothing wrong.

"We have never, ever had anything like this presented to us before," said Sue Dunn, vice president of organ procurement operations for the Denver-based Donor Alliance. "We talked to the family the day of the donation. ... This gentleman was on the donor registry. We've heard nothing from them regarding this."

Attempts to locate Rardin's family were unsuccessful and someone who answered the phone at the Montrose hospital said no one was available to comment.

Young said each hospital performed a test that did not prove Rardin was dead, and that more tests should have been done. He would not discuss details of the tests.

Rardin was brought to Montrose Memorial on September 26 and declared brain dead, Young said. He was then taken by helicopter to St. Mary's, where he was again declared brain dead and surgeons removed his organs.

Dan Prinster, a vice president at St. Mary's, said the hospital was willing to have a third party evaluate how Rardin's case was handled to prove everything was done correctly.

Young said state lawmakers should take up the issue.

"I think it (the organ donation) was done in good faith. ... But the standard has me thinking about taking the organ donation card off my license," Young said. "I don't mind donating organs if I'm dead, but I want to be dead first."

http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/10/05/organ.death.ap/index.html

If I'm brain dead please stop my heart from beating so my body isn't collecting medical bills. They did the right thing. He shot himself so he obviously didn't want to stick around here any more. What's the issue?

I can see that a county coroner might technically consider someone still alive as a vegetable and declare the organ removal the cause of death. He's correct to flag the issue for further discussion. But to me, this sounds like the doctors made the right call.

Anybody that is shooting themself is already brain dead in my book.

I understand the coroner's point that we need to exhaust all known options that someone is dead before we pronounce them as such. But when it comes to organ donating you can't run every friggin' test under the sun to determine if someone's dead. Those organs need to be removed ASAP and sent to a recipient who can make use of them before they get too damaged.

They declared him brain-dead twice; that's enough.

It's going to take a lot more than this to make me remove my organ donor endorsement from my license.