I’m joined today by two special guests to discuss an unusual and ethically complex type of organ donation – imminent death donation, or IDD. As you’ll hear Thao Galvan explain in the episode, organ donation currently has three standard types: living donation, donation after brain death (a type of deceased donation in which the patient is declared brain dead, and thus legally dead), and donation after circulatory death, or DCD. In DCD, a patient who is not brain dead is removed from life support, but the heart keeps beating. If it takes the patient more than roughly 90 minutes to die, the organs may not be usable. IDD, or imminent death donation, attempts to prevent that, by retrieving non-vital organs (usually a kidney) for donation prior to the removal of life support.

Thao Galvan is a transplant surgeon and professor of surgery at Baylor College of Medicine. Kathy Osterrieder is a retired financial analyst, who came to this issue after attempting, unsuccessfully, to donate the organs of her late husband, Robert Osterrieder, after making the difficult decision to remove him from life support. It is another first for the Taboo Trades podcast – the first time in over five years of recording that I’ve been unable to hold back the tears, as Kathy talks about what the experience was like for her family.

Links

Host: Kimberly D. Krawiec, Charles O. Gregory Professor of Law, University of Virginia

Guests:

Nhu Thao Nguyen Galvan, M.D., M.P.H., FACS, Associate Professor of Surgery, Baylor College of Medicine

Kathleen Osterrieder, Donor Family Member in Spirit, Retired Financial Analyst

Reading:

The Difficult Ethics of Organ Donations From Living Donors, Wall St. J. (2016)

Let’s change the rules for organ donations — and save lives, Wash. Post (2019)

OPTN, Ethical considerations of imminent death donation white paper (2016)

Survey of public attitudes towards imminent death donation in the United States, Am. J. Transplant. (2020)

Sign up to be an organ donor!

Welcome to a very special bonus episode of the Taboo Trades podcast! Today I have a record number of guests – five in total—continuing a discussion that we began at Yale’s Newman Colloquium earlier this summer. We discuss exploitation and trafficking in international human rights law, especially in the context of reproductive and sexual labor. You’ll hear more about that colloquium and that conversation during the podcast. Each guest introduces themselves at the start of the podcast, but you can also read their full bios and a reading list in the show notes.

Host: Kim Krawiec, Charles O. Gregory Professor of Law, University of Virginia

Guests:

Janie Chuang, Professor of Law, American University, Washington College of Law

Dina Francesca Haynes, Executive Director, Orville H. Schell, Jr. Center for International Human Rights; Lecturer in Law (spring term), and Research Scholar in Law, Yale University

Joanne Meyerowitz, Arthur Unobskey Professor of History and Professor of American Studies, Yale University

Alice M. Miller, Associate Professor (Adjunct) of Law and Co-Director, Global Health Justice Partnership, Yale University

Mindy Jane Roseman, Director of International Law Programs and Director of the Gruber Program for Global Justice and Women’s Rights, Yale University

Reading List:

Janie A. Chuang

• "Preventing trafficking through new global governance over labor migration." Ga. St. UL Rev. 36 (2019): 1027.
• “Exploitation Creep And The Unmaking Of Human Trafficking Law.” The American Journal of International Law, vol. 108, no. 4, 2014, pp. 609–49. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.5305/amerjintelaw.108.4.0609 . Accessed 13 June 2025.

Dina Haynes

• "Used, abused, arrested and deported: Extending immigration benefits to protect the victims of trafficking and to secure the prosecution of traffickers." Human Rights Quarterly 26.2 (2004): 221-272. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/168121
• "Client-centered human rights advocacy." Clinical L. Rev. 13 (2006): 379.
• "Sacrificing women and immigrants on the altar of regressive politics." Human Rights Quarterly41.4 (2019): 777-822. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/735796

Kimberly D. Krawiec

• Repugnant Work (April 21, 2025). Forthcoming, Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Work (Julian Jonker and Grant Rozeboom, eds.), Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=5225038
• “Markets, Repugnance, and Externalities.” Journal of Institutional Economics 19, no. 6 (2023): 944–55. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744137422000157 .

Joanne Meyerowitz<

In this sign off episode, I say good bye to this year's student cohosts from UVA Law: Anthony Freyre, Kimberly Garcia, Laura Habib, Olivia King, Alyssa Lawrence, Alyssa Marshall, Alexa Rothborth, Nia Saunders, Tanner Stewart, Cyrus Tafti, John Henry Vansant, Lauren White

But never fear, loyal listeners. I'll be back in 2025 with bonus episodes featuring interesting authors discussing their scholarship.