NY woman declared ‘brain dead’ woke up moments before organs harvested - by Thaddeus Baklinski

SYRACUSE, NY, July 9, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A woman who was pronounced brain dead by doctors unexpectedly woke up just as her organs were about to be removed for transplant. 

Doctors at St. Joseph's Hospital Health Center were called on the carpet by the state Health Department for not properly determining if Colleen S. Burns was actually dead before they sought permission from her family to harvest her organs and scheduled the procedure. 

Burns, 41, of Syracuse, New York, was taken to hospital in October 2009 after a drug overdose.

Doctors believed she had suffered irreversible brain damage and was on the point of death, but it later came to light that she was in fact in a deep drug-induced coma.

The Health Department's investigation uncovered a series of mistakes and miscommunications that culminated in a situation that was saved only because Burns opened her eyes on the operating table. 

According to a report on the case, the state Health Department found that doctors ignored a nurse's observations indicating Burns was not dead and her condition was improving, and that not enough brain scans were performed to confirm the often-contested diagnosis of brain death. 

Moreover, Health Department investigators found that staff skipped a recommended treatment to prevent the drugs the patient took from being absorbed by her digestive system, and that not enough testing was done to see if she was free of all drugs before her organs were taken. 

The report said that the day before her organs were to be removed, Burns responded to a reflex test. Her toes curled downward when a nurse scraped the bottom of her foot with her finger.

A nurse said she saw Burns' nostrils flare on the way to the operating room, indicating that she was breathing independently of the respirator she was attached to, and that her lips and tongue were moving.

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According to hospital records, twenty minutes after those observations were made a nurse gave Burns an injection of the sedative Ativan. The doctors' notes, however, make no mention of the sedative or give any indication they were aware of the nurse's observations. 

Dr. David Mayer, general and vascular surgeon and an associate professor of clinical surgery at New York Medical College, also reviewed the records and found the use of a sedative perplexing. 

"It would sedate her to the point that she would be non-reactive," Mayer told the Post-Standard. "If you have to sedate them or give them pain medication, they're not brain dead and you shouldn't be harvesting their organs." 

The Health Department's report said that Burns "did not suffer a cardiopulmonary arrest and did not have irreversible brain damage," as St. Joseph's doctors had determined. 

"The hospital did not undertake an intensive and critical review of the near catastrophic event in this case," the report said, and hospital officials did not "identify the inadequate physician evaluations of (Burns) that occurred when nursing staff questioned possible signs of improving neurological function."

Tragically, it was reported that Burns committed suicide 16 months after her sojourn in the hospital. Her mother, Lucille Kuss, told the Syracuse Post-Standard that the family did not pursue an investigation of the incident or sue the hospital because her daughter had been severely depressed before the incident and afterwards was not concerned that doctors almost took her life.

The state Health Department fined St. Joseph's Hospital Health Center $6,000 for mishandling the Burns case and for not properly investigating the cause of the incident. The hospital was also ordered to review its quality assurance program, and to hire a consulting neurologist to provide instruction on how to accurately diagnose brain death. 

This is not the first time that a potential organ donor has woken up literally on the operating table, moments before they were opened up. 

In 2008, a 45-year-old Frenchman revived on the operating table as doctors prepared to “harvest” his organs for donation, following cardiac arrest. In the subsequent investigation by the hospital’s ethics committee, a number of doctors admitted that such cases, while rare, were well known to them. 

That same year, a “brain dead” 21-year-old American, Zack Dunlap, was about to have his organs harvested when his two sisters, both nurses, decided to test the hospital’s theory that his brain was no longer functioning. Family members poked his feet with a knife and dug their fingernails under his nails, provoking strong reactions by Dunlap and proving he was conscious. He recovered completely. He later related that he was conscious and aware as doctors discussed harvesting his organs in his presence.

The term “brain death” was invented in 1968 to accommodate the need to acquire vital organs in their “freshest” state from a donor who some argue is still very much alive.

While death had previously been defined as lack of respiration and heart activity, “brain death” was judged as compatible with an otherwise living patient. “Brain death” has never been rigorously defined, and there are no standardized tests to determine if the condition exists.

The report by the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on the Burns case at St. Joseph's Hospital Health Center is available here.

Dad rescues ‘brain dead’ son from doctors wishing to harvest his organs – boy recovers completely

by Matthew Cullinan Hoffman

LEICESTER, England, April 25, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - According to the Daily Mail newspaper, a young British man owes his life to an insistent father who would not allow his son’s organs to be removed from his body, despite assurances from four doctors that his son could not recover from the wounds he had suffered in a recent car accident.

The Mail reports that Stephen Thorpe, then 17, was placed in a medically-induced coma following a multi-car pileup that had already taken the life of his friend Matthew, who was driving the vehicle.

Although a team of four physicians insisted that his son was “brain-dead” following the wreck, Thorpe’s father enlisted the help of a general practitioner and a neurologist, who demonstrated that his son still had brain wave activity. The doctors agreed to bring him out of the coma, and five weeks later Thorpe left the hospital, having almost completely recovered.

Today, the 21-year-old with “brain damage” is studying accounting at a local university. “‘My impression is maybe the hospital weren’t very happy that my father wanted a second opinion,” he told the Mail.

The case is similar to dozens of others LifeSiteNews has reported in recent years, in which comatose or otherwise unconscious patients are declared to be “brain dead,” or hopelessly incurable. In many cases, aggressive doctors seek the organs of the patient for harvesting.

In 2011, the Quebec Hospital Sainte Croix de Drummondville sought permission to extract the eyes of a patient who had choked on hospital food in the absence of a nurse, claiming she was “brain dead.” After the family demanded proof from physicians of her alleged condition, she regained consciousness, and recovered most of her faculties. The family declared its intention to sue the hospital.

In 2008, a 45-year-old Frenchman revived on the operating table as doctors prepared to “harvest” his organs for donation, following cardiac arrest. In the subsequent investigation by the hospital’s ethics committee, a number of doctors admitted that such cases, while rare, were well known to them.

That same year, a “brain dead” 21-year-old American, Zack Dunlap, was about to have his organs harvested when his two sisters, both nurses, decided to test the hospital’s theory that his brain was no longer functioning. Family members poked his feet with a knife and dug their fingernails under his nails, provoking strong reactions by Dunlap and proving he was conscious. He recovered completely. He later related that he was conscious and aware as doctors discussed harvesting his organs in his presence.

The term “brain death” was invented in 1968 to accommodate the need to acquire vital organs in their “freshest” state from a donor who some argue is still very much alive.

While death had previously been defined as lack of respiration and heart activity, “brain death” was judged as compatible with an otherwise living patient. “Brain death” has never been rigorously defined, and there are no standardized tests to determine if the condition exists.

Dr. John Shea, a medical advisor to LifeSiteNews.com, points out that patients diagnosed as “brain dead” often continue to exhibit brain functions.

In “Organ Donation: The Inconvenient Truth”, Shea states that the criteria for “brain death” only “test for the absence of some specific brain reflexes. Functions of the brain that are not considered are temperature control, blood pressure, cardiac rate and salt and water balance. When a patient is declared brain dead, these functions are not only still present, but also frequently active.”

A list of articles by LifeSiteNews on comotose and “brain dead” patients who unexpectedly recovered follows:

* Brain dead’ woman recovers after husband refuses to withdraw life support
* Woman Diagnosed as “Brain Dead” Walks and Talks after Awakening
* ‘Brain dead’ Quebec woman wakes up after family refuses organ donation
* Doctor Says about “Brain Dead” Man Saved from Organ Harvesting - “Brain Death is Never Really Death”
* Doctors Who Almost Dissected Living Patient Confess Ignorance about Actual Moment of Death
* New study questions “brain-death” criterion for organ donation
* Coma Recovery After 19 Years Poses Questions About Terri Schiavo
* Polish Man Wakes from 19-Year “Coma”, Talks and Expected to Walk Soon
* Man Wakes from Two-Year Coma – was Aware and Remembers Everything
* Boy in “Hopeless” Vegetative State Awakens and Steadily Improves
* Commentary: The Significance of that Case of the Man Trapped in a “Coma” for 23 Years
* Girl Once Comatose and Scheduled for Euthanasia Will Testify against Attacker
* ‘Comatose’ UK Man Chooses Life by Moving Eyes
* Woman’s Waking After Brain Death Raises Many Questions About Organ Donation
* Russian Surgeons Removing Organs Saying Patients Almost Dead Anyway
* Denver Coroner Rules “Homicide” in Organ-Donor Case

Related links:

The boy who came back from the dead: Experts said car crash teen was beyond hope. His parents disagreed

Euthanasia Pushes Belgium Into Abyss

by Wesley J. Smith

In Secondhand Smoke

The Netherlands used to be the heart of euthanasia darkness. It is still dark, but the culture of death crown has passed to Belgium, which not only legalized doctor-injected killing, but has enthusiastically embraced euthanasia’s logical corollaries. And now, we find that the number of euthanasia killings continues to rise exponentially. From the story:

“Growing trend for euthanasia,” headlines the front page of Le Soir. ”Since 2002, and the implementation of a law that partially depenalises the practice, there have never been more cases of euthanasia,” explains the Belgian daily, which reports on the latest figures from the federal monitoring agency. With more than 85 declared cases per month since the start of this year, there will be more than 1,000 deaths by euthanasia in 2011, as opposed to 954 in 2010.

As a comparison, in 2008, there were about 500 cases, meaning a 100% increase in just 3 years.

Not only that, but as I have reported here, Belgium euthanasia as resulted in:

• Joining lethal injections with organ harvesting;
• The joint euthanasia of “non terminal partners,” who don’t want to live without each other;
• Nearly as many euthanasia deaths were non voluntary as voluntary in one study;
• Infanticide based on “quality of life” also occurs openly, as in the Netherlands, although it remains against the law. (See also here).
• In another study, nearly half of euthanasia deaths were shown to be non voluntary, many carried out by nurses;
• The euthanasia of a non terminally ill elderly woman who went on a hunger strike until a doctor agreed to kill her;
• Belgian pharmacies selling euthanasia kits to doctors.

Euthanasia is becoming a way of “life” in Belgium. As a consequence, the country is in a moral free fall. Culture of death, Wesley? What culture of death?

A cannibalistic society - The proposal for a legalized market of human organs

In L' Osservatore Romano

The proposal is not new. In 2006, in an interview in the San Francisco Chronicle subsequently picked up by the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, Nobel Prize winning economist, Gary Becker, called for the opening of a legal market for the sale of human organs.

The call was born out of the growing diffusion of transplant tourism and the now socially accepted act of desperation that was once considered shameful: the clandestine acquisition of a kidney or a liver for fear of not surviving the long waiting list in America. Recently, Jessica Pauline Ogilvie in the pages of the Los Angeles Times expressed the hope that the market for kidneys would be legalized: if it were legal to buy and sell organs, many poor people would make money and many ill people would resolve their problems.

The debate is heated. Many, some doctors included, maintain that the buying and selling of kidneys should be legalized under conditions of full and informed consensus, with medical assistance both before and especially after the extraction of the organ and in light of the incontrovertible data which, like it or not, shows that the phenomenon is already a reality.

Besides, the more Western democracies move toward individual auto-determination in choices of health and life, the more it is likely that juridical obstacles on the level of principle will be quickly overcome.

Those against the proposal object that such a market would only benefit the rich; that it would create a form of modern slavery; that it is a juridical lie to speak of full and free consensus given the desperation that induces one to sell a part of oneself; that a legalized commercial donation would have a negative impact on the voluntary organ donations of corpses, which instead represent the main source of donations in many countries. Giuseppe Remuzzi, an Italian doctor specialized in transplants, while recognizing the desperation of many, wrote in Italian daily, Corriere della Sera, “We cannot accept the buying and selling of organs, not even if regulated by law.”

Fully sharing in the opposition to such commerce, the moral problem is not primarily that of the seller. In human history, desperate persons have resorted to desperate measures in order to save themselves or someone they love. If medical science today allows every conceivable line to be crossed, the hidden rationale becomes this: crazy desperation induced by poverty. And societies that “legitimize” this desperation are societies that are incapable of defending their citizens. The most serious problem, however, resides with the buyer. Outside of any other consideration, the heart of the problem lies here: are we willing to accept that a person buys his health, or saves his life, by buying replacement pieces from someone else’s body?

The suspicion that societies open to this market are in fact cannibalistic, is real and dramatic.

Giulia Galeotti

May 14, 2011