Yikes.
Denmark shocked by story of brain-dead donor’s recovery
The world of organ donation in Denmark is in turmoil. A documentary was aired earlier this month which showed family members reacting in anguish to the news that their 19-year-old daughter was brain dead after a car accident, agreeing to donate her organs and allowing doctors to turn off her respirator. About 1.7 million viewers tuned in to the heart-rending drama.
But Carina Melchior did not die after her respirator was removed. She is now undergoing rehabilitation and may make a full recovery. About 500 people immediately removed their names from Denmark’s organ donor register.
Doctors at Aarhus University Hospital were embarrassed by the incident. “We are overjoyed that the young woman survived and that she is moving on after the accident,” Claus Thomsen, the hospital’s chief medical officer, said. "But we made a mistake underway and made the family believe that their daughter and sister would die.”
The hospital acknowledged that the question of organ donation should not have been raised as there were no unambiguous signs that brain death would occur.
This is very serious business. It is absolutely essential that the integrity and accuracy of the process used to determine brain death be impeccable. Removal of organs from a person who is not yet dead is homicide.
Organ donation is a wonderful thing and has saved countless lives, but organs may only be harvested from dead people and with consent. I have participated in this process hundreds of times, and we are very careful to make sure the diagnosis of brain death is accurate and that the family is fully informed of the situation so that they can make an informed decision.
This egregious and very public error will seriously harm efforts to obtain organs for people who need them, and it almost cost this young lady her life.
Please pray for her speedy recovery, and please pray for wisdom and prudence for our doctors and for all who participate in the life-saving organ donation process.
Sounds like my mother. For some people, killing isn't really killing when they can justify it to themselves by saying that the person was going to die anyway. (Surprise...every human being is going to die anyway, at some undetermined point in the future.) They say that the doctors told them the person was going to die, and so it must be true. As if doctors can't be wrong.
ReplyDeleteKilling is killing. If you kill your mother because you think she'll never recover, then she really won't ever recover and you'll think that you were supposedly right. You'll never find out that your mother had thirty more years left to live. Give your relative a chance to beat the odds.
That one's for you, Troy. The one who's so quick to kill infants on the word of a doctor.
JQ
Oh, I don't trust medical doctors very much at all. On several occasions I had diagnosed myself correctly (by Google and applying some common sense), only to be contradicted by the MD who proscribed the wrong medication and had to admit later that I was right from the get go. So I would always ask for multiple opinions before making up my mind.
DeleteTroy, you see my point. No one's asking you to diagnose yourself. I'm saying that if you kill someone on the advice of a doctor (who should know better, via the Hippocratic Oath), you may never find out that he was wrong. And doctors can be wrong. This case proves it. There are many others just like it, including one in my family.
DeleteKilling babies, as they do in Holland, is still killing babies. Born babies, I mean, because unborn babies are killed all over the globe. The argument that they were just going to die anyway falls flat. First, it's still killing, second, no doctor can say that with certainty. Any doctor who does is a quack.
JQ
JQ, you can never be entirely sure. You have to weigh the odds. But if my child were born without a brain I wouldn't hesitate to have it killed.
Delete"But we made a mistake underway and made the family believe that their daughter and sister would die."
ReplyDeleteTheir mistake is that they forgot to sedate "the body" to keep "it" from waking up and ruining the harvest.
"Organ donation is a wonderful thing and has saved countless lives, but organs may only be harvested from dead people and with consent. I have participated in this process hundreds of times, and we are very careful to make sure the diagnosis of brain death is accurate and that the family is fully informed of the situation so that they can make an informed decision."
ReplyDeleteI hope you will begin to reconsider your participation in Big Organ, for the organ procurement industry cannot fail to be immoral.
I share your concerns. As ordinary donation is done now, it is ethical, and does save many lives.
DeleteI don't think it will end well, either. If ethical physicians who are concerned about the future withdraw from the process, it will get evil for sure, and much sooner.
"Brain dead" scheduled-to-be-organ-harvested persons wake up all the time (I reference a couple of incidents in this post). That's why the "doctors" have taken to sedating the "corpses".
DeleteAs I noted, I share your concerns. There are indeed bad things happening.
DeleteThat said, I've been doing this for 30 years, and have declared many hundreds of people brain dead, many of whom went on to be donors. I should note that the ABSENCE of sedation is a prerequisite for declaration of brain death.
I have never seen a "brain dead" patient "wake up".
Most doctors I know are quite concientious about this, and very careful. There have been many lives saved by this process, and I believe it is ethical and good to donate under these circumstances.
But as you accuratedly note there are nasty things happening, like the incidents that show up in the press, and there is a small but influential subset of people in the transplant community who are pushing for loosening of standards.
It is indeed scary, and needs to be fought.But I know the process as it is practiced very well, and it is generally meticulously ethical.