From Someone Dead You Can't Take Living Organs

frannybananny

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I checked it off too and need to figure out how to get it changed as well. A couple months ago a coworker told me about a horrible experience when one of his patients who was an organ donor was awake, alert and crying when the procurement team came to harvest her organs. He stayed in the room holding her hand and was yelling at them to leave because she wasn’t dead. He was forcibly taken out of the room by sheriff’s deputies at the hospital. He was terribly traumatized by the situation.
OMG that's barbaric! Long ago I decided not to be an organ donor when I learned that the majority of the cost would be passed along to survivors.... a huge amount $$. So I have never checked that box. I had no idea of the possibilities that the donor could still be alive and just in a coma. Ack!
 
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I checked it off too and need to figure out how to get it changed as well. A couple months ago a coworker told me about a horrible experience when one of his patients who was an organ donor was awake, alert and crying when the procurement team came to harvest her organs. He stayed in the room holding her hand and was yelling at them to leave because she wasn’t dead. He was forcibly taken out of the room by sheriff’s deputies at the hospital. He was terribly traumatized by the situation.
I have heard some unpleasant stories from my nurse friend too, not as bad as yours, but more about the upset some of these families go through and nothing they can do about it, because the donor is still alive, but “supposedly “ clinically dead. They can’t “pull the plug either” a lot of people don’t know that, not until the organ donor people get what they want, which takes a day or two. It is a hot debate in his hospital he says. He said he didn’t check the box. Boy talk about PTSD!
 

Blossom

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OMG that's barbaric! Long ago I decided not to be an organ donor when I learned that the majority of the cost would be passed along to survivors.... a huge amount $$. So I have never checked that box. I had no idea of the possibilities that the donor could still be alive and just in a coma. Ack!
Unbelievable!
I have heard some unpleasant stories from my nurse friend too, not as bad as yours, but more about the upset some of these families go through and nothing they can do about it, because the donor is still alive, but “supposedly “ clinically dead. They can’t “pull the plug either” a lot of people don’t know that, not until the organ donor people get what they want, which takes a day or two. It is a hot debate in his hospital he says. He said he didn’t check the box. Boy talk about PTSD!
Yes, I cringe every time I hear promotions for signing up for being an organ donor now.
 

David PS

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I no longer have an organ donor card. I have heard stories of MDs waiting in the wings for people to die or be taken off life support so that their organs can be immediately harvested. It is just big business. I would not expect them to reduce my hospital bills for the value they receive from my organs.
 

J.R.K

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I no longer have an organ donor card. I have heard stories of MDs waiting in the wings for people to die or be taken off life support so that their organs can be immediately harvested. It is just big business. I would not expect them to reduce my hospital bills for the value they receive from my organs.
Not surprising @David PS.Turkey vultures can smell a dead animal from a mile away

 

David PS

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“According to the suit, the coroner’s office received a case in 2013 involving the death of an 8-year-old disabled boy named Cole who was in a coma after being found head-first and submerged in water and clothing in a top-load washing machine by his stepmother, the suit stated. The boy was taken to a hospital, where the nonprofit organ and tissue harvesting company One Legacy obtained permission to have his organs harvested for donation after his death, the suit stated.

But when the boy kept breathing after being taken off a ventilator, the attending physician gave him a large dose of fentanyl, a synthetic opioid used to treat severe pain, as a “comfort measure” that instead caused cardiac arrest and the boy subsequently died, the suit stated. One Legacy then harvested his organs, the suit stated.

Bertone investigated the boy’s death and told her supervisors she believed he died of a fentanyl overdose. Her office wrote on the death certificate that the cause of death was suffocation caused by submersion in water, according to the suit.“

 
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“A protocol for DCD allows organ donation by patients who are near death and are ventilator-dependent but will not progress to brain death.[11] After a valid decision is made to discontinue life support, the option of organ donation may be offered. If the patient expressed a wish to be a donor or if the family agrees to donation, DCD may be carried out. The patient is brought to the operating room, the ventilator is removed so ventilation stops, circulation stops within 60 minutes, and when there has been no circulation for 2-5 minutes, the patient is pronounced dead and organs are rapidly removed. Kidneys and liver can often be used for transplantation, but because of the ischemic time, the heart is seldom transplanted. If circulation does not stop within 60 minutes, the organs are deemed to be too damaged for transplant and the patient dies without donating organs.“
 
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“There are even more compelling reasons to argue that the DDR is routinely being violated in the case of “brain dead” donors. With mechanical ventilation, “brain dead” individuals maintain a wide array of biological functions, including circulation, respiration, wound healing, infection fighting, temperature regulation, secretion of neurohormones, and even gestation of a fetus for up to three months. They are not dead according to the established biological conception of death.[4] While detailed examination of the status of “brain dead” donors lies outside the scope of this essay, it is mentioned here to indicate that compliance with the DDR is systemically problematic—the problem is not limited to the practice of transplantation under DCD protocols.

What is the upshot if vital organ donors under DCD protocols (and “brain dead donors) are not really dead, or not known to be dead, at the time of organ procurement? Strict compliance with the DDR would dictate that we stop transplanting vital organs from these donors. However, this would lead to many desperately ill patients failing to receive life-saving, or life-enhancing, organ transplantations—a drastic outcome that few people would endorse. To be sure, it is possible to sustain the status quo by muddling through, relying on the fiction, which is not officially acknowledged, that vital organ donors are dead at the time of organ procurement. Instead of relying on a legal and moral fiction, however, we can seek an ethically sound justification for vital organ transplantation from donors who are not known to be dead. Space limitations permit only a sketch of the argument, which has been developed in detail elsewhere.[4]

The key to justifying vital organ donation without the DDR is to acknowledge the causal force of withdrawing LST, particularly mechanical ventilation. The conventional view is that withdrawing mechanical ventilation, or other means of life support, merely allows the patient to die, but does not cause the patient's death. Rather, the patient's underlying medical condition causes death. This view, however, is not credible and fails to withstand critical scrutiny.“

 
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“The legal basis of what’s known as the “dead donor rule” (DDR), which requires that donors must be dead according to legal criteria, is rooted in physicians’ fears of civil and criminal liability for participating in organ retrieval and donation. This article suggests that one reason to revisit the DDR is to help illuminate possible legal ways to retrieve and donate organs. Specifically, this article considers one of these: medically justifiable homicide, which is legally and ethically distinct from murder and wrongful death.“


“The weakness of the DDR stems from its presumed ethical and legal justifications and the key problems they attempt to solve. One ethical justification is designed to protect vulnerable people from being “sacrificed” or “killed” for their organs.4 An additional ethical rationale, which reflects the perspective of physicians, is that the Hippocratic Oath forbids physicians from harming or killing their patients; hence, the DDR acts as a safeguard to ensure that ethical medical practice prohibits the deliberate killing of patients.4 The legal basis—that dead donors must be legally dead—is equally important and compelling in understanding the rule’s rationale. The legal basis, which is meant to protect physicians, is rooted in organ transplant physicians’ fear of being held civilly and criminally liable for killing a patient. By better understanding the legal basis of the DDR and its implications, alternative solutions can be explored that might enable physicians to legally participate in organ donation outside of the DDR.”


 
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“But what are you giving up when you check the donor box on your license? Your organs, of course—but much more. You're also giving up your right to informed consent. Doctors don't have to tell you or your relatives what they will do to your body during an organ harvest operation because you'll be dead, with no legal rights.

The most likely donors are victims of head trauma (from, say, a car or motorcycle accident), spontaneous bleeding in the head, or an aneurysm—patients who can be ruled dead based on brain-death criteria. But brain deaths are estimated to be just around 1% of the total. Everyone else dies from failure of the heart, circulation and breathing, which leads the organs to deteriorate quickly.

The current criteria on brain death were set by a Harvard Medical School committee in 1968, at a time when organ transplantation was making great strides. In 1981, the Uniform Determination of Death Act made brain death a legal form of death in all 50 states.

The exam for brain death is simple. A doctor splashes ice water in your ears (to look for shivering in the eyes), pokes your eyes with a cotton swab and checks for any gag reflex, among other rudimentary tests. It takes less time than a standard eye exam. Finally, in what's called the apnea test, the ventilator is disconnected to see if you can breathe unassisted. If not, you are brain dead. (Some or all of the above tests are repeated hours later for confirmation.)

Here's the weird part. If you fail the apnea test, your respirator is reconnected. You will begin to breathe again, your heart pumping blood, keeping the organs fresh. Doctors like to say that, at this point, the "person" has departed the body. You will now be called a BHC, or beating-heart cadaver.“


“But BHCs—who don't receive anesthetics during an organ harvest operation—react to the scalpel like inadequately anesthetized live patients, exhibiting high blood pressure and sometimes soaring heart rates. Doctors say these are simply reflexes.

What if there is sound evidence that you are alive after being declared brain dead? In a 1999 article in the peer-reviewed journal Anesthesiology, Gail A. Van Norman, a professor of anesthesiology at the University of Washington, reported a case in which a 30-year-old patient with severe head trauma began breathing spontaneously after being declared brain dead. The physicians said that, because there was no chance of recovery, he could still be considered dead. The harvest proceeded over the objections of the anesthesiologist, who saw the donor move, and then react to the scalpel with hypertension.“

 
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J.R.K

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If there was ever any doubt that evil exists and that there are no demons to fear in Hell because they are all here.
 

bornamachine

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You know the kind of disgust we all feel for grave robbers and fallen soldier robbers in the field, imagine the magnitude of this whole operation, how much more wicked and evil it is.

The Ukraine link, basically they are harvesting all organs from dying wounded soldiers in that center, including eyes and skin! Disgusting! The horror these people go through...

It was year 2006? I was at the DMV getting my driver's license, a 16 supple chubby super healthy (gleaming with health actually) boy, and I came to the part that said "organ donor?" Having gno prior knowledge about anything, I thought to myself "Suppose you are in an accident in the future and the guy working on you has to make a choice, try and save you or let you slide so they can harvest all your young supple organs to "save more lives" it will be tempting to let you die in order to save 7 other people"

That being said, it was a hard NOPE

That being said, some years ago I ran across this subject and basically they will still fight tooth and nail to harvest you, basically bullying your family or sometimes even someone who is a friend to sign off on your behalf. It's sickening and may God keep us all.
 
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You know the kind of disgust we all feel for grave robbers and fallen soldier robbers in the field, imagine the magnitude of this whole operation, how much more wicked and evil it is.

The Ukraine link, basically they are harvesting all organs from dying wounded soldiers in that center, including eyes and skin! Disgusting! The horror these people go through...

It was year 2006? I was at the DMV getting my driver's license, a 16 supple chubby super healthy (gleaming with health actually) boy, and I came to the part that said "organ donor?" Having gno prior knowledge about anything, I thought to myself "Suppose you are in an accident in the future and the guy working on you has to make a choice, try and save you or let you slide so they can harvest all your young supple organs to "save more lives" it will be tempting to let you die in order to save 7 other people"

That being said, it was a hard NOPE

That being said, some years ago I ran across this subject and basically they will still fight tooth and nail to harvest you, basically bullying your family or sometimes even someone who is a friend to sign off on your behalf. It's sickening and may God keep us all.
Yeah I don’t like that last part of what you said. I better start having conversation with those who would be making those conversations. This is scary.
 

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