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… The truth behind organ donation & organ transplants

WAS
NOT
DEAD

Carina Melchior , a 19 year old student, suffered severe injuries after crashing her car. Doctors said she would soon be “brain dead” and convinced her family to consent to organ donation. But, as doctors gathered around her bed to prep her for organ donation, she suddenly opened her eyes and moved her legs. Now she is making a full recovery. [more]

WAS
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DEAD

Steven Thorpe , 17 year old Warwickshire youth, was declared “brain dead” by four doctors, but his parents did not give up on him, and insisted on another opinion from an independent GP and a neurosurgeon. Steven made an unexpected recovery and left hospital alive seven weeks later. [more]

WAS
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DEAD

Zach Dunlap , a 21 year old Oklahoma man, was “feeling pretty good” four months after he was diagnosed as “brain dead”. Ironically, Zach heard the doctors pronounce him dead, but was unable to do anything about it. A few days later, he revived and spoke to his family. [more]

WAS
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DEAD

Sam Schmid , a 21 year old Arizona college student, was critically wounded in a five-car accident. Surgeons thought he had no hope of recovery and broached organ donation with his family. Sam was poised to ‘donate’ his vital organs, when he suddenly emerged from a coma. He has since had rehabilitation and walks with the aid of a walker. [more]

WAS
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DEAD

Val Thomas , 59 year old West Virginia woman, came back to life, after being clinically “brain dead” for 17 hours. Attempts to revive her after a heart attack had failed, and doctors diagnosed her as “brain dead”. Later “she moved her arm, coughed and asked for her son.” ... she was alive. [more]

WAS
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DEAD

Gloria Cruz , 56 year old Northern Territory woman, was declared “brain dead” and expected to ‘die’ within 48 hours. A doctor, a social worker and a ‘patient advocate’ urged her husband to remove the ventilator and let her ‘die’. But he refused and 3 days later, Gloria revived, awoke from her coma and was getting around hospital in a wheelchair. [more]

WAS
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DEAD

Madeleine Gauron , a 76 year old Quebec woman, was diagnosed by medical staff as “brain dead”, with no hope of recovery. Doctors asked if the family would agree to organ donation, but the family asked for more medical tests. The next day, astonishingly, she awakened and sat up in bed and ate yogurt. [more]

WAS
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DEAD

Rae Kupferschmidt , 65 year old Minnesota woman, suffered a massive cerebral haemorrhage and doctors diagnosed her as “brain dead”. She was taken home to die and her family began making funeral arrangements. When Rae spontaneously sucked an ice cube offered by her daughter, she was found to be alive. She later walked. [more]

WAS
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DEAD

Suzanne Chin suffered cardiac arrest and collapsed into unconsciousness. Taken to hospital, she remained in a coma and the head of ICU, two neurologists & a cardiologist said she was brain-dead with no hope of recovery. But her husband refused to turn of her life support. 3 days later, Suzanne revived & is now well & very much ALIVE. [more]

The Nasty Side of Organ Transplanting

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An extract

Speaking up for organ donors

by Ellen Bridget Linde, RN, BSN

(As a nurse, Ellen B. Linde is guided by life-respecting values of “doing good” & “doing no harm”. In this article, she reports on her detailed research into organ harvesting practices and protocols, and concludes that harvesting organs from living patients is ethically wrong. Read full article at NursingCenter.com website.)

-------- Some of Linde’s comments: --------

“Some (nurses), believing that removing vital organs is what kills the patient, view organ donation performed under current criteria for pronouncing death as an act of killing. ...not all nurses are comfortable with a value system driven primarily by the needs of transplant recipients rather than by the needs of the potential donor.”

... “The so-called dead donor rule is the legal and ethical standard that requires patients to be declared dead before the removal of life-sustaining organs for transplantation. But what is death and when does it occur? These are complex and controversial questions.”

... “defining death as brain death also presents ethical quandaries. Robert D. Truog, MD, director of clinical ethics at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Mass., writes that using brain death as the standard legitimatizes (sic) organ removal from bodies that continue to have circulation and respiration ..., and this ‘fails to correspond to any coherent biological or philosophical understanding of death.’ ”

... “Where do I stand on organ donation? When I started researching this article, I was an avid, outspoken advocate for organ donation, but I’ve since had a change of heart. Shewmon’s study of 175 patients who met the full criteria for whole-brain death led me to conclude that it’s ethically wrong to recover organs from a person who’s still breathing - regardless of whether or not breathing is achieved through mechanical ventilation.”

( Extract from article in Nursing 2009: Speaking up for organ donors by Ellen Bridget Linde, RN, BSN)

*... Shewmon DA. “Brainstem death,” “brain death” and death: a critical re-evaluation of the purported equivalence. Issues Law Med. 1998;14(2): 125-145.
Linde notes that “Shewmon reported on 175 cases in which the bodies of patients reliably diagnosed as fulfilling the whole-brain death criterion (in general, they didn’t have brain waves) were maintained for varying periods, in some cases years, with little aggressive intensive care besides mechanical ventilation.” She also notes that these patients exhibited various body functions, including: “wound healing, successful gestation of a fetus in 13 women, sexual maturation and growth, and, most disturbing of all, cardiovascular and hormonal stress responses to incision for organ retrieval.”

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