Organ Harvesting Before "Brain-Death" Increasingly Common, Concerned Doctors Warn

LifeSiteNews ^ | 3/21/07 | Gudrun Schultz

[rlmorel]

Rubbish. You have no idea what you are talking about. You have no idea what transplantation involves, how donors and candidates are chosen, and what regulations are involved.

You think my attitudes would be useful in China? Your ignorance of my attitudes is evident, but I have a pretty good idea what your attitudes are, and they don't evolve from a base of knowlege or any kind of critical thinking.

You read things on the Internet and that is the Gospel truth for you. You have a lot of company out there.

I am certain you would be one of the first to complain if you had difficulty getting a transplanted organ to keep you alive. You want all the benefits and none of the responsibility.

Grow up.

[rlmorel]

So this Dr. Busatil was a corrupt evil guy, therefore all health care personnel involved in transplantation are just as corrupt and evil?

Just because Clinton was a womanizing POS, does that make every Chief Executive a womanizing POS?

Because Ken Lay was a crook at Enron makes everyone in the energy field a crook?

Is that what you are implying or saying?

[Jubal Harshaw]

Didn't you just move the goalposts? I'm pretty sure your original question was "Who on this thread has experience in health care, particularly transplantation?" I answered that.

By the way, I have a cousin who used to work with the transplant group at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. After a while, when people asked her what she did for a living, she started saying (I kid you not) "I work for the devil." According to her, the Rush transplant group routinely lied to parents to get thier kids into transplant research from which there was no real hope of survival. She soon left and found another line of work.

[rlmorel]

I didn't move the goalposts at all. I responded to a comment you made about this Dr. Something or other who, by your accounts, was lining his pockets on the dead bodies of organ donors.

You made that observation about that doctor, which I interpreted to be a justification for your view, that being that transplantation services are simply interested in lining their pockets, standing with scalpels over the bodies of organ donors whose hearts have not stopped beating yet.

Do I sound pissed? You bet I am. I know people involved in transplantation, and they are some of the finest healthcare workers I know. Many of them have sacrificed their personal lives to a high degree because of the nature of the service, that is they may be paged at any time to be available for surgery.

You throw out things like "my cousin knows such and such..." and it sounds like the slander I hear issuing forth from liberals most of the time.

What you imply is a despicable, cowardly, slanderous hearsay. It is tough enough to get people or their relatives to agree to donate organs to those who desperately need them without crap like this.

If your so called cousin has knowledge that patients were routinely lied to, does she not have an ethical obligation to make that knowlege public? You bet she does, or she is just as complicit in any unethical behavior as they are.

[Jubal Harshaw]

Look, I understand that you are emotionally attached to something on this thread, but please back off, take a breath, and read what I actually wrote. I didn't just note that UCLA lost an inordinate number of transplant recipients; I pointed out that UCLA lost these recipients AFTER OTHER GROUPS HAD FIGURED OUT HOW TO DO LIVING RELATED HEPATIC TRANSPLANTS WITH A HIGH SURVIVAL RATE. This does not mean that every transplant surgeon is bad. On the contrary, I have tremendous respect for the good transplant surgeons out there. There's a lot of them, and they work inordinate hours.

At the same time, however, there are some transplant surgeons who are not quite on the up and up. There's a few who are flat out crooks. Just last year, St. Vincent's transplant group of Los Angeles sold a #1 spot on the transplant list to a Saudi Royal for (as I recall) $300,000. The sick person who had been next in line for the organ died; the Saudi Royal, who was apparently not sick enough to be high on the list, except for the fact that he paid his way on, got the organ. That's crooked. There are apparently more than a few crooked transplant surgeons. That's the fact, in my opinion.

More to the point of this thread: there are quite a few transplant surgeons who I suspect would bend the rules to get at organs, and cause harm to the donor, or perhaps to potential recipients, in the process. There's at least one surgeon in California who is apparently under investigation for actually going so far as to interfere in an ongoing resuscitation effort in Feb 2006, apparently in order to get some 24 year old organs (see my post near the top of this thread). Thats a concern to the general public, among whom there are more potential donors than there are potential recipients. In my opinion, that's the fact.

[TASMANIANRED]

Prayers you your Mom and yourself.

Must be a profound heart ache.

[Dr.Zoidberg]

Cue the crickets...

[freedomlover]

I want my organs donated only after I am too dead to vote Democrat.

[rlmorel]

Yes. You bet that I am "emotionally attached to something on this thread".

It is called the truth, not conjecture.

You are apparenly willing to use a story regarding selling a spot on a transplant list to a Saudi Royal as evidence indicating it is the usual practice. Then you go on to reference some other incident with a surgeon who interfered in resucitation to obtain an organ. You do this to buttress your STRONG INFERENCE AND OUTRIGHT CLAIM that this is the usual and widespread practice, when it is NOT.

THAT is what I have an issue with.

Because some men happen to rape and murder women, is that fair to indict all men? Because that is the equivalent of what you are doing.

[Grizzled Bear]

Well, quite a lot of them are brain dead even when visibly they appear alive, alert, and well, and that complicates.

---

Quite a lot of them are brain dead and yet ambulatory. Everyday they wander around and find creative ways to piss me off. ;-)

[shorty_harris]

At the same time, however, there are some transplant surgeons who are not quite on the up and up. There's a few who are flat out crooks. Just last year, St. Vincent's transplant group of Los Angeles sold a #1 spot on the transplant list to a Saudi Royal for (as I recall) $300,000. The sick person who had been next in line for the organ died; the Saudi Royal, who was apparently not sick enough to be high on the list, except for the fact that he paid his way on, got the organ. That's crooked. There are apparently more than a few crooked transplant surgeons. That's the fact, in my opinion.

You hear variations on this theme all the time. I don't believe it for a second. First of all, the surgeon has no control over the process. In fact, the process is incredibly complicated, and very well regulated. Somebody would notice that Saudi slipping somebody (who?) that money, and blow the whistle. This kind of thing just doesn't happen.

What makes you believe there's more than a few crooked transplant surgeons? I know a handful of them myself, and not a one would ever consider trading one life (the donor) for another (the recipient) for financial gain, or any other reason.

Sure, I have a connection with the transplant process. But it doesn't color my viewpoint, it just gives me a view of the process most people don't get.

[Jubal Harshaw]

You wrote, apparently referring to my post about St. Vincent's medical center selling a spot on the transplant list: "This kind of thing just doesn't happen."

Do they not have Google on your internet? A quick Google search for "st. vincent's medical center transplant saudi liver" turned up the following story as the first hit:

Hospital Halts Organ Program St. Vincent center in L.A. says a patient, 52nd on liver transplant list, got improper priority and the action was covered up.

OK, I'll admit I got the year wrong; this actually occured in 2003, not 2006. The rest of the story is as I've described it.

[shorty_harris]

Sounds like they have some incompetent record keepers. I'd stay away from this center just based on that. But you claim that the center "sold a #1 spot on the transplant list", and this is what I'm saying doesn't happen, and I didn't see this claim in the article.

[Jubal Harshaw]

OK, the article writers did not use the term "sold a #1 spot on the transplant list." Rather, they described how the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia paid for a transplant into a patient, referred to as "patient B," who was #52 on the transplant list. "Patient B," who had been #52 on the transplant list, then got a transplant ahead of everyone else on the list. I characterized that as being "#1 on the transplant list."

If I erred, it was in using the term "#1 on the transplant list" rather than "bypassed the transplant priority list and got the next liver, regardless of what number spot he was actually in." The second phrasing is somewhat cumbersome in my opinion, if more accurate. However, if it makes my point more clear, please ignore any references to "#1 on the transplant list" and mentally replace them with "bypassed the transplant priority list and got the next liver regardless of what number spot he was actually in."

I hope that was satisfactory.

[RKBA Democrat]

"Who on this thread has experience in health care, particularly transplantation?"

Interesting how you asked the question, got direct answers, and are now apoplectic because you apparently don't like the answers that were provided.

"If any of you ethically are against transplantation, have the courage just to come out and say it instead of trying to demonize and stigmatize the dedicated, principled and hard working people who often devote their lives to this specialty."

Fair enough. I am morally and ethically opposed to most organ transplantation. The costs are astronomical, the long term survival rates (depending on the procedure) are not that impressive, there are significant incentives to jump the clock in removing organs from the dying, and there are better uses that the medical resources could and should be put toward.

While I am pro-life in the sense that I oppose abortion and withholding end of life care from ill and elderly, I don't view being pro-life as meaning that I have to support every radical medical intervention technique that comes along.

Organ transplantation has become a profit center for hospitals and I find it hypocritical to put an extreme profit incentive onto bad behavior on the one hand, and then play the Casablanca routine of being "shocked....shocked!" when bad behavior happens.

There is no need for me to demonize and stigmatize the people who dedicate themselves to the practice: it seems to me that enough of them are doing a pretty fair job of that on their own.

[rlmorel]

That's fine. You don't have to support transplantation. I am pro-life too. What on earth does that have to do with anything here? But there is something I find interesting. You are opposed to "most" organ transplantation?

What "most" do you support and not support?

So, you profess to know all about organ transplantation? You seem to want to play God...which transplantation procedures are "Okay" with you and which ones are "Evil"? What is your calculus to support one or the other?

So, the costs are too high for you? Do you support keeping a ten year old kid on dialysis for the rest of their life when a kidney could give them a normal life? Or is kidney transplantation one of the "Okay" ones with you?

How about a liver? Are you against that? Are you against Live organ donors too?

What do YOU know about the procedures and regulations for getting organs from a deceased person? Have YOU ever been involved in the process? Do YOU know what takes place? Have YOU ever been in a room where the subject of organ donation was discussed with a grieving family? Tell me, because I am all ears, I really am.

I will make a prediction. You don't know squat. All you know is what you read on the Internet.

So tell me. If it is YOUR little eight year old girl who needs a liver, is a liver transplant just too expensive? Hmmmm?

Or would you sacrifice her to make sure that "greedy hospital" doesn't get too much money, and that there are "better uses that the medical resources could and should be put toward."

[rlmorel]

"...There is no need for me to demonize and stigmatize the people who dedicate themselves to the practice: it seems to me that enough of them are doing a pretty fair job of that on their own...."

A completely asinine statement. Nice job.

[RushingWater]

Anybody ever listen to the director's voiceover for the movie called The Island? It talks about a wealthy sheik having a healthy young person continuously available for harvesting his organs in case there's a need. I have never heard that anywhere else.

[shorty_harris]

Your implication is that this person bought his way to the top of the transplant list. This is not true, and not what the subsequent investigation found.

Transplant patients get shuffled around on the waiting list for a number of reasons (which is why, as a candidate, you aren't told where you're at on the list). It could be because you're not the correct match (blood type, wrong size), someone suddenly becomes sicker than you, or, in this particular case, because of gross mismanagement of record keeping processes (which is bad enough in itself).

[Jubal Harshaw]

OK, there's really no point in bantering with you and rlmorel about this any more. I suggest to anyone else reading this thread that they read the linked article about the Saudi who was #52 on the transplant list, then got a liver while the person who was #1 on the list did not.

Note that the $339,000 known payment to St. Vincent was labeled the "cost for the transplant and the hospital stay," but it's approx. $300,000 more than the hospital would have gotten had the organ in question gone to the #1 patient on the list (who was not at St. Vincent's).

Note that St. Vincent's is known to have generated multiple instances of fabricated documentation regarding this case. This fabricated documentation would have covered up the incorrect transplant.

The article is pretty clear; in my opinion, my characterization of it's story is accurate. Again, I invite anyone else reading this thread to click on the linked article a few posts up in this subthread, and make their own assessment.