An increased demand for organ transplants and donations has complicated the lines between life and death while making the judgment more crucial than ever, Elizabeth Price Foley explains.

Benjamin Franklin once said, “Nothing is certain except for death and taxes.” While our bank accounts are reliable indicators that tax time has come and gone, indicators of death aren’t always so clear.

Declaring death is important for several reasons, including for the purposes of organ donation. As transplants become easier, demand for organs has increased faster than supply. To meet this growing need, the industry must find transplantable organs beyond willing individuals indicating their post-death wishes – typically after cardiopulmonary death.

The other option, based on current legal definitions, is donation upon brain death. The definition is clear – brain death is the irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain, including the brain stem ¬– but the application much more fuzzy.

Foley points to two main ambiguities in the real-world setting – testing and training – that need to be standardized for us to have complete confidence in the practice of using organs from brain dead patients. Until then, we’re left to the judgment of the jurisdictions where we die.

Watch Foley’s full talk here:

Ileana Rodriguez shares her unique perspective on disabilities and devices and inspires us to pursue our goals despite perceived obstacles.

What do you see when someone enters a room? Their physical traits? Their clothes?

When Ileana Rodriguez enters, many people notice her wheelchair first. She has been in a wheelchair since the age of 13 and since then she has achieved heights most walking folks can only imagine. Still, many people still see the device first.

Rodriguez learned early on that, while her wheelchair set her apart from the crowd on land, in the water she was like everyone else. Her device “disappeared.”

Her desire to be seen for who she is, not where she sits, inspired the design of a dress for one of her FIU architecture classes. Unlike her classmates, who aimed to protect themselves from physical elements like rain and heat, her creation protected her from people – people who couldn’t see beyond the wheelchair.

Rodriguez has certainly proved herself. She and her fellow athletes in the 2012 Paralympics Games are as dedicated to their sport as their Olympic counterparts.

Though the American Record-holder didn’t place in London, Rodriguez did fulfill a dream that nearly every athlete holds: to represent her country on the world stage. And she did it without her wheelchair.

Watch her full TEDxFIU talk:

Dr. Pedro “Joe” Greer challenges physicians to look beyond the business of medicine and truly improve lives in their communities.

For the first time in the history of our nation, today’s children will have shorter life expectancy than their parents.

The United States is one of the top spenders on health care among industrialized nations, yet has some of the worst health outcomes.

These are just two of many sobering statistics that have convinced Greer that there is something very wrong with the current state of the medical establishment.

Greer explains that many of the factors leading to poor health in America are not scientific, but social – things like poverty, violence, racism and food deserts. These are factors most doctors are not trained to consider, yet would make a huge difference on patient outcomes. The business of medicine has placed a premium on treating symptoms, rather than preventing them in the first place.

The solution, Greer argues, begins in the medical school classroom, where aspiring physicians should be trained in social accountability alongside human anatomy.

A social mission is not just talk for Greer, but also practice and implementation at FIU’s Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine. Along with traditional training, Greer and his colleagues have another mission: To instill in their students an understanding of social determinants and a commitment to the communities where their patients live through interdisciplinary and hands-on experiences, such as NeighborhoodHELP.

Watch the full talk below:

Ximena Prugue’s talk at TEDxFIU inspires us to consider how easy it might be to alleviate the issues of energy poverty through technological advances like solar-powered lights.

Energy poverty is something most of us here in the United States would equate with camping. But in other parts of the world it results in health issues, diseases and even death. In rural India, entire villages rely on kerosine lights at night and cook with cow manure briquettes  This creates a “lethal cocktail”, as Ximena puts it, of fumes and harmful chemicals which result in the equivalent of smoking two packs of cigarettes a day.

Ximena was seventeen years old when she started a non-profit organization called Giving the Green Light to India. She sought out a vendor, raised some money and journeyed to a land she knew very little about with a friend and a bag of 250 solar powered lights. Her adventure actually led to her academic focus on mechanical engineering.  She is inspired by the ability to engineer a product or system that will ease or possibly eliminate energy poverty and she is eager to pick up her project where she left off when she graduates. Ximena understands that while this is a small change for the three villages she visited, it can have a profound effect on awareness and help inspire her generation to keep searching for solutions.