"I understand the concerns people have... but this is a misguided endeavor," said Dr. Michael Grodin, a professor of health law, bioethics and human rights at the Boston University School of Public Health.
He said this procedure -- whether done in children or adults -- crosses a line in terms of when organs can be taken.
"That line is clear and bright, and I think it needs to stay that way," Grodin said.
Indeed, doctors disagree on the exact point when a patient can be declared dead, revealing that the question of when life ends is as debatable as when it begins.
One central concern is the heart itself. Though the organ could technically be restarted in the donor infant, it is not. But once the donor is declared dead, it is transplanted into the organ recipient and then restarted.
"The fact that the hearts could be restarted in other infants whose prognoses were better does not suggest that the hearts should have been kept going in the bodies of the original donors," said R. Alta Charo, a professor of law and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin Law School.
"In the donor bodies, the continued pumping of the heart was futile, given the scope of damage elsewhere. But in the recipients, the pumping hearts could lead to salvaged lives," she said.
But Grodin disagreed.
"To my standard, the person is not dead," he said. "Taking the heart of somebody [when there's a] question of whether they're dead or not is a serious concern."
In this case, he said, the patient clearly does not meet the necessary criteria of having the heart irreversibly stopped.
"If you're going to take out the heart, obviously the heart starts up again or you couldn't do the transplant, so it's clearly not irreversible," he said.
Grodin also raised the issue of public perception.
"I think that we need to be very concerned about the public's sensibility and sensitivity," he said.
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