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Judd Marmor, MD
Los Angeles

JAMA. 1968;204(4):341.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor:—

It has become customary in the medical literature on organ transplants to talk about the "harvesting" or the "procurement" of cadaver organs. It seems to me that neither of these terms is psychologically appropriate. The term "harvesting" calls to mind an image of surgeons gleefully gathering together gruesome basketfuls of hearts, kidneys, and other assorted organs, and congratulating themselves on the size of the "crop." The term "procurement" seems to connote a military draft or some secretive, illicit transaction. Neither of these terms is psychologically conducive to encouraging either patients or relatives to participate voluntarily and with minimum ambivalence in what is potentially a deeply humanistic and life-saving purpose.

I would like to suggest, therefore, that the use of the terms "harvesting" and "procurement" be avoided in future transplant literature and be supplanted by the term "salvaging," which carries with it the connotation of saving an organ . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

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