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One in five ‘brain dead’ patients still alive, claims lawsuit
Life Site News ^ | 10/01/2012 | Hilary White

Posted on 01/03/2014 6:34:06 PM PST by Marie

At least one in five patients declared brain dead and approved as organ donors by one organ donation organization, are in fact still alive and are being killed by the removal of vital organs, a lawsuit filed last week in Manhattan alleges. The suit outlines the ghoulish worst-case scenario, one that was widely dismissed as scaremongering in the early days of the development of organ transplant technology, but which is getting a second hearing amidst growing concerns that coercion and abuse are becoming increasingly common in the highly lucrative transplant business.

Patrick McMahon, a nurse practitioner and Air Force combat veteran, launched the suit in New York alleging that a major organ donation group is using a quota system for obtaining viable organs. He says it is applying pressure on families and doctors to declare patients dead who are, in fact, still alive and could recover.

The New York Organ Donor Network, McMahon says, even hires “coaches” to help obtain consent notes.These coaches, the suit contends, are nothing more than sales and marketing experts who teach transplant coordinators to use high-pressure psychological tactics to play on the emotions of vulnerable family members. The suit alleges that employees who failed to make their quotas were fired.

“You’re not there for grief counseling,” he told the Daily Mail, “you’re there to get organs. It’s all about sales—and that’s pretty much a direct quote from the organization. Counselors are required to get a 30 per cent consent rate from families." The top counselors get a Christmas bonus, he added.

McMahon’s suit cites one case in which a 19-year-old car crash victim was struggling to breathe and showing signs of brain activity, but doctors signed off on the donation.

(Excerpt) Read more at lifesitenews.com ...


TOPICS: Health/Medicine; Religion
KEYWORDS: abomination; allaboutmoney; antichoice; antilife; brain; coma; culture; cultureofdeath; death; deathindustry; followthemoney; ghouls; graverobbing; jahimcmath; lawsuit; of; organharvesting; righttolife
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To: Marie
I just don’t understand why people are so opposed to helping this girl.

Sorry, can't help you. I usually disagree with almost everyone, and have little sympathy or empathy for most people, am completely immune to "It's for the Children", so I can't figure out how they think. I can, however, nearly always predict what they will do.

21 posted on 01/03/2014 7:27:02 PM PST by Navy Patriot (Join the Democrats, it's not Fascism when WE do it, and the Constitution and law mean what WE say.)
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To: Navy Patriot

So you’re pro-choice?


22 posted on 01/03/2014 7:29:07 PM PST by Marie (When are they going to take back Obama's peace prize?)
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To: Marie

The issue of when a person is truly dead is a very complex one made even more difficult with every advance in healthcare and technology.

This is made even more difficult by the stories one hears of someone thought to be beyond recovery waking up....the “miraculous recovery” that makes the evening news and is widely talked about. The reason that the incident is called a “miraculous recovery” is because they are so rare.

For every miracle there are dozens if not hundreds of bodies kept alive by machines for months and even years at the cost of a million dollars or more per year. The vast majority of these professional corpses eventually die from some complication, usually an infextion. The hard part is it is impossible to pick out the miracle from the machine dependent dead until they either wake up or die.

The fundamental issues in this case are twofold. One is moral and ethical....when is someone actually dead,who makes what care decisions and who decides if and when the plug is pulled.

The second issue is one of cost. The amount of money involved in maintaining a vegetative body is astronomical....a years worth of such care costs more than many people earn in a lifetime. WHO PAYS THE BILL?
If all the costs are born by the patient/family then the choices should be left to the family or their designated representative.

However......99.99% of ALL these cases represent a person who will have these costs paid for by society in some form, either direct write off as an uncollectible debt, via insurance which increases the costs to every policy holder, or the taxpayer ultimately foots the bill. In these cases the decision cannot and shpuld not be solely at the discretion of the family,because it’s REAL easy to spend millions of dollars of OTHER PEOPLES MONEY.

It’s the same issue faced with providing state of the art care for those who are so old and decrepit they will NEVER function as a normal human again yet they receive massive amounts of expensive care to postpone an inevitable death by a few weeks or months.

As long as people expect this care to be provided for them using OTHER PEOPLES MONEY then some process MUST be in place to justify the expense.

In the case in Oakland we are NOT hearing all the facts and in fact not even the truth. The family and attorneys are free to say whatever they like....to try this case in the court of public opinion. The hospital and doctors are bound by HIPAA, they cannot openly discuss this case as the family won’t waive
the privacy rules. Therefore we are NOT hearing an accurate accounting of this incident.


23 posted on 01/03/2014 7:35:45 PM PST by nvscanman
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To: Marie

No, I’m Pro Life, and pro abstinence until marriage, and pro male duty to not pressure women before marriage.


24 posted on 01/03/2014 7:36:33 PM PST by Navy Patriot (Join the Democrats, it's not Fascism when WE do it, and the Constitution and law mean what WE say.)
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To: nvscanman

This is not supposed to be US. We don’t give up. If something isn’t working we put our best and brightest on the problem and find a solution.

I agree with you that it’s horrible for the taxpayers or insurance policy holders to pay a ton of money to try to save one life (especially when the odds are so low), but WE don’t throw away our basic morality and values when things get tough.

We cling to those values while we dig until we find a better way.

THAT is the USA. That is the America that I know.


25 posted on 01/03/2014 7:51:19 PM PST by Marie (When are they going to take back Obama's peace prize?)
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To: Marie
Marie, I am so thankful that your mother stood firm and resisted the efforts of the medical "experts" to deny you the opportunity to grow and develop into the woman that you are today. I say this as a member of the medical profession who has been teaching Medical Laboratory Technology for over 30 years.

I had just graduated from Med Tech school when my husband and I moved back to our home town and I began work at the local hospital. The hospital has on staff one of the leading abortion doctors in the state and I was horrified to see young girls who were still in their teens having their second or third abortion. If the patients were admitted to the hospital, that meant that they were past 20 weeks and some had aborted babies that even in the 1980s could have easily survived outside the womb. I decided then that I would be on the side of life, whether it be that of a baby or an elderly person. God is the only one who should determine when a person passes from this world to the next.

I will never forget the example of Terry Schiavo. She was obviously responding to her parents and was not in any way on "life support". She was literally starved and dehydrated to death even though, like you, she had parents who were willing and able to care for her. The greed and selfishness of her so-called husband is responsible for what happened to her and one day he will have to answer for what he did to her.

Even before Obamacare was passed, I have always been against any government involvement in health care. Part of the reason is because I was still working in a hospital setting when the government first became involved in hospital reimbursement in the early 1980's and they were no better at it then than they are now. I also realized it was not only government involvement that was making health care more expensive, it was also the threat of litigation and the legal profession itself that were contributing to the increased cost, something that Obamacare deliberately did not address.

The biggest fear I have with Obamacare is that a group of government bureaucrats will be making these life and death decisions rather than the patient, the patient's family, and their doctors. They are the ones who are in a position to know the specifics of the case better than any government entity whose bottom line will always be whether or not the medical care the patient needs is "cost effective". Sarah Palin was exactly right when she called them "death panels" because letting these patients die will always be cheaper than providing them medical care.

26 posted on 01/03/2014 7:54:01 PM PST by srmorton (Deut. 30 19: "..I have set before you life and death,....therefore, choose life..")
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To: Marie

Doctor disputes common acceptance of ‘brain death’
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2962293/posts

Pro-Life Perspective: Nat Hentoff’s Reflections on Terri Schiavo, part 1
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3002532/posts


27 posted on 01/03/2014 7:55:07 PM PST by Pete from Shawnee Mission
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To: Navy Patriot

This is one frustration that I’ve had with conservatives. They want to fight ‘for the children’ while they’re in the womb, then they’re done.

I do TOTALLY agree with you that the whole ‘for the children’ trope has been overdone and abused to death.

But this is not an instance of using ‘for the children’ to infringe on the rights of the population.

This is ‘for a child’. This is for parental rights. This is pro-life.

The effects of this case bleed into your life. Your right to determine when and if the plug is pulled on your loved ones. Does a hospital have the right to overstep familial boundaries?

The hospital is winning. They’re killing the kid with starvation and a lack of medical care. They’ve got the media on their side. Even FReepers are on their side.

But where will you want everyone to be when you’re trying to defend your loved one? When you just want a transfer? When you want the hospital to let in another dr to perform basic procedures so that your loved one can be safely transferred?

This is another infringement on OUR rights as family.


28 posted on 01/03/2014 7:59:32 PM PST by Marie (When are they going to take back Obama's peace prize?)
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To: Marie

My boss must be one of them.


29 posted on 01/03/2014 8:06:13 PM PST by jmacusa ("Chasing God out of the classroom didn't usher in The Age of Reason''.)
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To: srmorton

Thank you for your story.

It was very hard for me to write because I knew this was the internet and I was going to get a lot of negative. I honestly didn’t know if I could handle that. I thank you for opening up here.

When my mother was working with handicapped children the parents of a boy (I think he was 13 when she started working with him) started having her come to their house to work with him one on one. I’d go with her to play with her daughter.

This kid was PVS from birth. My mom and his mother started working with him for hours every day. Working him through stretches and trying to force his body through the developmental steps.

When they started (and I’ve got to give HIS mom the most credit. She hit the project for eight straight hours a day) all he could do was moan and lay in his chair.

It took almost a year, but he was rolling over, crawling and said ‘mama’. He was MUCH more expressive and, the same as it happened with me, once he got the hang of it, progress exploded.

And then he got sick. He died very shortly after from medical malpractice. (Not getting into details on that)

I believe that it’s Denmark (I’ve got to look it up to be sure) that’s making the most progress in this area. They’re having fantastic improvement with brain damage with the constant stimulation technique. I do know that they’ve used it with children who’ve had half their brains removed due to surgery for epilepsy and these kids come out close to normal.


30 posted on 01/03/2014 8:12:14 PM PST by Marie (When are they going to take back Obama's peace prize?)
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To: Marie

Thank you for posting that, and for being alive. I thank your wonderful mother too.

In November 2009 I was asked if I wanted feeding and breathing assistance for my wife after she had a massive “bleeder” stroke. I was told she would be severely disabled (and she is). I was offered the option of the assistance or to disconnect everything and “let nature take its course”. I took the assistance for her, and she is alive.

She lives with paralysis and a lot of pain. Some days she is angry at me for not letting her go. Most days she’s glad.


31 posted on 01/03/2014 8:20:28 PM PST by CPO retired
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To: Marie
This article contains a discussion not of “resurrection,” but rather of cellular death, how long it takes, how to resuscitate someone who has had a heart stoppage, cellular brain death versus brain stem activity.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/doctor-sam-parnia-believes-resurrection-is-a-medical-possibility-a-913075.html

Back from the Dead: Resuscitation Expert Says End Is Reversible

....Snip

“SPIEGEL: Basic first aid teaches us that the brain is very fragile. Three to five minutes after the heart stops, the brain incurs permanent damage due to lack of oxygen.”

“Parnia: This is a widely-held misconception, even among doctors. It's mostly based on research done in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. In those days, doctors concluded that brain cell death was inevitable in such a short time. Now we know that if treatment is correct, it really can take hours for brain cells to die. And only if all the treatments that we know today are not implemented, the damage can become apparent after as little as five minutes without blood flow. Part of the problem is that we all live in the past — patients, doctors, nurses and legislatures. We have preconceived ideas about death. For thousands of years, death was a clear, precise moment: The heart stopped beating, and that was it. Nothing could be done from then on. You either were alive or not. But since the arrival of CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) more than 50 years ago, we know that this view is no longer correct. Death is not a fixed moment anymore. From a cellular perspective, it is a process that proceeds at various speeds in the different tissues of the body after the heart stops.”

“SPIEGEL: And that process is, in your words, fully reversible?”

“Parnia: Of course, it is of paramount importance to protect the brain. CPR as early as possible after cardiac arrest is essential. But the really dangerous period for brain is only after you restart the heart and get the person back to life. It is then that you start getting major brain damage. One of the reasons for this is that when you restart blood flow to the brain, which hasn't seen any blood for a while, the oxygen itself becomes toxic. The brain can become very swollen and inflamed and at the same time, blood flow to the brain drops to dangerously low levels. The brain also becomes perilously starved of oxygen and nutrients. Consequently, most brain damage after resuscitation occurs not within the first few minutes of death, but in the hours up to the first 72 hours after resuscitation. But with proper post resuscitation care, we can minimize that...”

(Snip)

“...SPIEGEL: Doesn't the idea of “bringing people back” imply that they weren't really dead in the first place?

Parnia: I think the state they are in corresponds to the cultural concept we all have of death. We encounter it in movies and books all the time. That is my basic message: The death we commonly perceive today in 2013 is a death that can be reversed.

SPIEGEL: But not real brain death.

Parnia: No. When brain cells have decayed after a number of hours, no intervention, neither now nor in a 1000 years, will bring them back. That death is final. But up to that point, there is a gray zone. Today, we simply do not know when someone transitions from potentially reversible to irreversible. Tests used today to diagnose brain death are tests of brain stem function — not of actual cell death....”


Anyone interested should really read the full article. I don't have medical training and really cannot debate this. The doctor is associated with NYU Stonybrook, not a third world clinic. I doubt that any of the protocols he mentions were used on Jahi McMath. Be aware that when the article mentions temperatures they will be in Centigrade, not Fahrenheit.
32 posted on 01/03/2014 8:20:46 PM PST by Pete from Shawnee Mission
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To: Marie
Of course this is an infringement on parental rights (and the child's rights, as well), the biggest part of American society is infringement, and it is nothing new.

What I said is I can't explain it, but I can predict it.

Obviously I know it affects me and my family.

In the long run there are consequences for a society that tolerates incompetence, false information and abuse of authority. Humans never change their nature and you can see that in history.

33 posted on 01/03/2014 8:32:39 PM PST by Navy Patriot (Join the Democrats, it's not Fascism when WE do it, and the Constitution and law mean what WE say.)
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To: Pete from Shawnee Mission

I was reading another article where the doctor was saying that, in a case such as this, you have to give the patients a few weeks of supportive care and ‘allow the dust to settle’. There’s no way of knowing at this point.


34 posted on 01/03/2014 8:39:00 PM PST by Marie (When are they going to take back Obama's peace prize?)
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To: Navy Patriot

Agreed.

So don’t fight ‘for the children’ fight for our rights to self-determination and for the rights of family to protect family.


35 posted on 01/03/2014 8:42:20 PM PST by Marie (When are they going to take back Obama's peace prize?)
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To: Marie

Thank you for sharing your story Marie. This is the case with a couple of my family members as well. The care of family moved them toward recovery. God bless.


36 posted on 01/03/2014 8:48:41 PM PST by antceecee (Bless us Lord, forgive us our sins and bring us to everlasting life.)
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To: Marie

Thanks for sharing this. You are so right that the family must be the decision maker, and fighting for life is not a mistake or being cruel.

I was extremely frustrated by the lack of care and concern when my Dad was in intensive care, and they were pressuring me and trying to make me feel guilty for not “ending his suffering”. I kept insisting that he get nutrition, antibiotics, and ventilator to see if the anitbiotics would work.

What is happening with this recent case is just awful. To think that the hospital would go against the family’s wishes and actually withhold nutrition is criminal as far as I am concerned.


37 posted on 01/03/2014 8:58:36 PM PST by greeneyes (Moderation in defense of your country is NO virtue. Let Freedom Ring.)
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To: CPO retired

I broke my back wne I was four (not paralyzed, thank G-d) and it’s been a hard road.

For me there have always been just three things that have set me on edge.

1) Pain. Chronic, horrible pain. If that’s under control, my life is livable.

2) Feeling like a burden. Like I’m not pulling my own weight. Like the people I love would be better off without me. (They’ve made it very clear that this is not the case.) So I give as much as I can and try very hard to (at least!) be a kind, supportive person.

3) Feeling like I’m useless. A person needs a purpose. So I’ve started writing. That’s something I can do. As long as I’m working toward something, I’ve got something to live for.

I have no idea what condition your wife is in, but it sounds like ‘she’ is very aware. We all need to have a purpose.

Please check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joni_Eareckson_Tada

Paralyzed from the neck down, she writes, paints, and has a ministry.

With today’s technology, people can paint with only their eyes. http://gizmodo.com/5403741/eyewriter-allows-man-to-paint-despite-paralysis

If she’s in too much pain, she needs a new doctor and stronger meds.

I’m still struggling, but I’m happy (for the most part). Even happier now that I have a real hobby. Hubby’s happy that I’m happy and productive.

(If you ever want to talk, I’m here)


38 posted on 01/03/2014 9:03:09 PM PST by Marie (When are they going to take back Obama's peace prize?)
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To: Marie

I stand with you. I remember when the Shiavo matter became news, and I heard it on the radio. I said to myself, there is no way in America some one will be starved and killed. To make it worse, those doctors tried to tell the public that the starvation and lack of hydration was pleasant and somewhat euphoric. I have often wondered how much money transacts to those involved in procuring the organs.


39 posted on 01/03/2014 9:08:05 PM PST by healy61
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To: Marie
The key, as I see it is to reduce, as much as possible, the power, size and intrusiveness of the state.

In this particular case the liability of the doctors and hospital is much more limited (under state law) if the child dies as opposed to being stabilized on life support for a few weeks and possibly surviving when it is then withdrawn.

The state will be able to direct the recipients of her organs should she die quickly, but will be denied those organs should she survive long term.

She's worth more dead than alive to the doctors, hospital and state.

There is no power the state will not abuse, and you will note that the state issues (or denies) licenses to practice or operate to both the doctors and the hospital.

I think you get the drift.

40 posted on 01/03/2014 9:15:41 PM PST by Navy Patriot (Join the Democrats, it's not Fascism when WE do it, and the Constitution and law mean what WE say.)
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