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Since under the circumstances a person is no longer conscious of their own body, we of course shouldn’t interpret the reflex reactions of the spinal cord that occur when a surgeon removes organs from a brain-dead patient as an expression of pain. That’s easily said, but it’s quite a different thing for the surgeon who sees the body respond when he makes an incision to remove its organs. In the United Kingdom, anesthesia is administered for this procedure. The Dutch association of anesthetists finds this nonsensical, and scientifically speaking they’re right. In such cases an anesthetic is given to preserve not brain-dead patients but rather transplant surgeons from discomfort.
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D.F. Swaab (We Are Our Brains: A Neurobiography of the Brain, from the Womb to Alzheimer's)