Lung, kidney recipient agrees to donate dead son's organs

When Gilad Sherman's family became aware that he would not survive, they initiated a request that his organs be transplanted.

By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH
Six years after he underwent an organ transplant to receive a new kidney and lung, Yossi Sherman agreed to donate the organs of his 33-year-old son, Gilad, to save others’ lives.
Gilad, a lawyer who worked in the State Attorney’s Office on cases presented to the High Court of Justice, died last week from a rare vascular disease in his brain, and his funeral was held on Sunday in Ness Ziona.
When Gilad’s family became aware that he would not survive, they initiated a request that his organs be transplanted.
Because medical factors prevented the determination of brain death, doctors waited until his heartbeat stopped.
Organ donations from a person without a heartbeat are much more complicated, with the staff following a strict protocol and working very quickly. In most such cases, only the kidneys can be used. At some medical centers, livers and lungs have been transplanted from a clinically dead donor whose heart did not beat.
At Hadassah University Medical Center in Jerusalem’s Ein Kerem, experience has been accumulated in such a procedure. One kidney, two corneas, skin for treating burns patients, bone tissue, ligaments and heart valves were removed for transplant, while the second kidney was transplanted into a 53-yearold man at Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center.
Gilad Sherman left a wife and a two-year-old son. Yossi Sherman is a social worker and head of prisoner rehabilitation for the Ashdod Municipality.
Supreme Court President Justice Dorit Beinisch expressed her sorrow over the loss at the funeral.