The smiling, happy faces of the people whose lives have been transformed by a new heart or kidney catch the headlines; few think about the anonymous donor. But how did the doctors decide that the donor was dead before they operated to remove his vital organs; how could they switch off his life-support machine when his heart was still beating? Tonight's Panorama examines the way we diagnose 'brain death' in potential transplant donors, and discovers that some of the doctors best qualified to know have evidence that the British system isn't foolproof. To illustrate how fatal mistakes can be made, Richard Lindley talks to three apparently 'brain dead' people about how they survived, when in Britain they could have been declared dead.

(Brookes On page 97)
(Feature p17)