Posted on 03/04/2009 4:30:31 PM PST by BykrBayb
What system?
“And *I* am very skeptical of anyone who stands to profit from cutting out anyone else’s organs.”
Not me. For example, here is someone that profited enormously from the “cutting out” of somebody else’s organs:
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Health/HeartDiseaseNews/story?id=6682961&page=1
“A heart has been found for the younger of two North Texas sisters placed on the transplant list.
A spokeswoman at Children’s Medical Center Dallas says that the transplant surgery for 7-year-old Emily Smith began Monday morning and was expected to last at least till mid-afternoon.”
(9 days later, Emily went home from the hospital).
I’m not the least bit skeptical of 7 yr old Emily Smith. She has a new lease on life.
She is why I do what I do.
I think some of you watch too many Law&Order plots twists.
In fact, donation is highly regulated, with multiple layers of backup validation built in, and it’s highly ethical. Those hotel room kidney job stories are urban legend and nothing more.
Donation is very pro-life.
Here’s the deal, once brain death is determined on a patient that still has cardiac activity on a ventilator, cardiac death will occur in hours, a day or so at the most. You are right that cellular decay will begin with the loss of brain activity. We aren’t talking about a choice between donation or being in a permanent vegetative state. A perm vegetative state requires some brain activity. There is only a small window of opportunity to donate.
I think that some of you think that, if not donated, brain dead people can “live” indefinitely in that state. They cannot.
Basically, and this might sound silly to have to say, but you actually need brain activity in order to live.
In the vast majority of cases, a donation refusal is followed immediately by removing life support. There is no point to continuing medical treatment on an already dead person.
(For the rare family that refuses both donation AND removal from life support, their loved ones cease cardiac functioning within hours. Your body actually needs its brain. It can’t live without it.)
There are multiple and overlapping tests that are done to ensure brain death.
For example:
1. An EEG - no waveform activity = brain death.
2. Cerebral flow test: no evidence of blood flow within the brain = brain death.
3. Apnea test: patient is detached from the ventilator and given oxygen directly to the lungs for several long minutes (but without the mechanical breathing). The oxygen down the breathing tube will keep oxygen in the lungs to perfuse into the blood, but the lack of breathing will not allow CO2 to exchange out. After long minutes with no sign of breathing - at all, a lab test is performed (arterial blood gas) to prove that CO2 exchange did not, in fact, take place. Evidence of CO2 exchange refutes brain death. A single breath during those long minutes refutes brain death. If you can breathe, at all, you aren’t brain dead. But - if you cannot breath, for long minutes, without mechanical intervention, it is a sign of very poor cerebral outcome. The apnea test doesn’t “prove” brain death, but can “disprove” it. If you have brain activity, the brain’s first and highest order of business is to get you to breathe. (The heart can be left on relative brain-free “auto-pilot” for hours. It LIKES to beat on its own). The lungs - cannot.
4. CT Scan/MRI Scan. Your brain is in a nice bone-hard box. Injuries to the brain have a way of squishing, through edema, your brain within that box, to a pulp. We call that “herniation”. A CT Scan will show the massive wreckage of such a brain. People don’t survive having their brains swell and squish to a pulp on the inside. They just don’t.
5. Reflex testing. Even when all higher functions of the brain are toast, the reflex circuit can remain intact. Reflexes don’t need higher ordered responses, they are triggered “on a circuit”. If you have reflexes, you aren’t brain dead. If you don’t, then you are. Reflexes are the last to go. A brain that cannot provide reflexive protection to the body is a brain that is simply not working.
A declaration of brain death requires multiple validation with these methods and a few more. It’s not something where mistakes can be made or where collusion can be successful. 3 different organizations must sign off on brain death (1. donor hospital, 2. organ donation people, and 3. receiving MDs flown in for recovery) not to mention multiple physicians.
In addition, there is normally about 6-10 hrs after the decision is made to donate before recovery is completed in order to select candidates to receive organs and to fly in doctors and equipment. During that time frame, multiple compatibility tests must occur. Several health care professionals are with that patient, at all time.
Donation is highly ethical, highly regulated, and highly pro-life.
I’m very proud of my work with organ donation. It’s one of the real ways I know I’m doing God’s work. I - and my peers - literally perform miracles.
A common prayer for me relating to my work is this: “As I have chance, skill, and opportunity, Dear Lord, allow me to be the mechanism of the miracle somebody is requesting of You, even now.”
I cannot stop somebody that is already dead from dying. But, I can help somebody else that IS dying to live.
There are no conspiracies to organ donation. There are no evil scientists counting out all the dimes he’s making by killing people.
Medical professionals normally get into this line of work to help people. We are mostly a fairly ethical lot when it comes to these sorts of issues.
Donation saves lives. Not donating - doesn’t. Dead people are still quite dead.
Clear cut: I’m pro-life. THAT is why I’m pro-donation.
Profiting from cutting out someone’s organs? How about saving someone’s life with an organ from a person whose life has ended?
How would the doctors be able to use an organ that was not perfused with blood? The organ itself would be dead, and therefore unusable. Brain death is cessation of brain activity, not of heart activity. Think it through....
Everything that's good can be used for evil purposes, and IS by someone somewhere. I am not advocating “throwing out the baby with the bathwater” by any means. However, there are times when being a skeptic is the right way to go. What was done in this particular case? Right now, we don't know. Hopefully, we will find out as it proceeds in court. But to *assume* that these hospital personnel handled the situation in an appropriate and ethical manner is very naive in this day and age of multiple Terri Schiavos and partial birth abortion.
IF it is true that this young man's organs were taken without the consent of his next of kin, this is an ethics violation, no matter the benefits which would accrue to the final donor recipients. The body is the ultimate private property, and in the “absence” of the owner, these “property” rights fall to the next of kin.
The ends NEVER justify the means.
Ditto. Especially with nationalized health care just around the bend.
If you sign your organ donation card, the next of kin have “property rights” over your organs.
???What are trying to say???
There are two definitions of death.
The old one is cessation of heart activity. It is outdated for numerous reasons. Principally because you can have a stopped heart and come back and you can be artificially supported long after you die.
Brain death is a better description. Once this has occurred, you are gone even if they support your body with tubes and hoses.
I think the thing that has a few noses out of whack is the fact vegetative state does not equal brain death. This is not the same thing as starving a person in a coma.
If this does not pertain to you, it certainly pertains to several posters on this thread.
It doesn’t pertain to me...
My point was that it’s possible for there to be brain death while maintaining perfusion to organs so as to be able to harvest organs for transplant.
I had a kidney transplant last year. My donor was pronounced dead the day before they harvested her organs (she had been on life support for 2 weeks prior after a methadone overdose)
That's news to me. I always thought that "Free Republic is the premier online gathering place for independent, grass-roots conservatism on the web."
Did you also know that "We're working to roll back decades of governmental largesse, to root out political fraud and corruption, and to champion causes which further conservatism in America"? If not, take a look at the home page.
Pro-life and Christian are just SOME of the views shared by the many members of FR. In case you haven't noticed, FR is also comprised of atheists, agnostics, Libertarians, anti-War On Drugs, pro-War On Drugs, and the list goes on and on.
You use some pretty strong adjectives to describe posters that you disagree with. But guess what; this is the USA, and the 1st Amendment is alive and well (for now), even on FR.
I agree; this article is bogus, poorly written, and misleading. It's a shame that the author only looked at the lawsuit, and didn't bother checking more in depth into the story.
Have you ever heard of Jim Robinson? I suggest you do a search to find out who he is and what he’s said on the subject. When you find the part where he said Free Republic is an anti-Christian anti-life site, get back to me.
Your ignorance of this process and prejudice are astounding. You are beyond rude.
Have you ever heard of a courtesy ping? Have you ever considered spelling someone’s name correctly when you’re lying about them in a post you failed to ping them to? You are beyond rude.
See post 111 for an explanation.
As for "profiting from cutting out anyone else's organs", it's truly sad that you can't see that the person "profiting" from this is the organ recipient (although a more appropriate term would be "benefitting").
The process of procuring organs is ethical, rigorous (as far as being sure that the patient truly is brain dead), and needed by many people with organ failure. I sure hope YOU never get to experience organ failure, but if you do, please be sure to remember this thread.
“Especially with nationalized health care just around the bend.”
Yes, now we must be even more diligent.
Hi, Sun! I remember you from the Terri threads. :o)
Each of us fought for her so hard on a daily basis, and when you do something like that over a period of time, you’re very aware of what already is happening in America. With nationalized health care, the situation is going to become much worse.
Just the elimination of the abortion conscience clause is enough to point in that direction.
“when you do something like that over a period of time, you’re very aware of what already is happening in America.”
We Terri supporters are more aware than anybody, imo, and we need to inform everybody we know, to protect other people from the same fate.
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