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

Iam tirar órgãos a jovem em 'morte cerebral', mas ele acordou

In TVI24

Um jovem de 21 anos que estava em coma há três meses com um diagnóstico de morte cerebral acordou antes de lhe retirarem os órgãos para serem doados.

Sam Schmid ficou em coma na sequência de um acidente de viação.

Os médicos acreditavam que estava em morte cerebral. Depois do acidente, o jovem teve uma hemorragia, um aneurisma e um AVC.

Sam Schmid acordou quando se discutia a colheita dos seus órgãos. Agora já fala e caminha com ajuda.

Os médicos estão surpreendidos com a sua recuperação.

No ‘moral certainty’ that brain death is really death: prominent Catholic ethics professor Brugger

by Hilary White

OME February 4, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A prominent American professor of Catholic medical ethics has said that in “brain death” criteria there is no “moral certitude” that a patient is really dead, a condition laid out by Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI as necessary for removing organs.

The available evidence, he said, “raises a reasonable doubt that excludes ‘moral certitude’ that ventilator-sustained brain dead bodies are corpses.”

Professor E. Christian Brugger, a Senior Fellow of Ethics at the Culture of Life Foundation gave this judgment in a question and answer article published today by the Rome-based news agency Zenit.

Brugger quoted Pope John Paul II, who told a congress on organ transplants that death is “a single event consisting in the total disintegration of that unity and integrated whole that is the personal self.”

“Although we cannot identify the event directly, we can identify biological signs consequent upon the loss of that unity,” said Brugger. But according to many experts, those biological signs are not present in “brain death” cases.

In his address to the 2000 organ transplant conference, Pope John Paul II had said that when “rigorously applied” brain death criteria “does not seem to conflict with the essential elements of a sound anthropology” but that this judgment must reach “moral certainty.”

Brugger suggests, however, that this statement does not “properly speaking” qualify as an authoritative statement of the magisterium, since the Church’s authority extends to matters of faith and morals. The validity of “brain death,” however, is based upon a “scientific premise that such and such empirical indicators correspond to an absence of human life.”

“This is a technical matter bearing on the adequacy of those indicators for accurately signifying that death has occurred,” he pointed out.

Brugger references the research of D. Alan Shewmon, which, he says, “demonstrates conclusively that the bodies of some who are rightly diagnosed as suffering whole brain death express integrative bodily unity to a fairly high degree.”

In fact, he says, “brain dead” patients on ventilator support “have been shown to undergo respiration at the cellular level … assimilate nutrients … fight infection and foreign bodies … maintain homeostasis … eliminate, detoxify and recycle cell waste throughout the body; maintain body temperature; grow proportionately; heal wounds … exhibit cardiovascular and hormonal stress responses to noxious stimuli such as incisions; gestate a fetus … and even undergo puberty.”

All of this, says Brugger, would seem to indicate that “brain death” fails to meet Pope John Paul’s definition of death as “the total disintegration of that unity and integrated whole that is the personal self.”

The controversy over organ transplants stems from the widespread application of various “brain death” criteria, as well as so-called “non-heart beating” death criteria to determine whether organs can be removed from a patient on life support. Physicians, eager to obtain organs, are routinely removing organs from patients whose vital signs are still strong, while family members frequently report being placed under heavy pressure to consent to organ “harvesting.”

This problem, however, has yet to be thoroughly addressed by the various relevant Vatican offices, with a strong trend among officials in favor of brain death criteria.

In November 2009, Pope Benedict XVI gave an address to a prestigious international conference on organ transplants in which he warned that the principle of moral certainty in determining death must be the highest priority of doctors. In its roster of speakers, that conference, partially sponsored by the Vatican’s own Pontifical Academy for Life, did not address the moral issue that is at the heart of the controversy over organ transplants.

The pope said, however, that donation of organs can only be licit if it does not “create a serious danger” to the health of the donor.

“There must not be the slightest suspicion of arbitrariness. Where certainty cannot be achieved, the principle of precaution must prevail,” he warned. Benedict added, “Informed consent is the precondition of freedom, so that the transplant has the characteristic of a gift and cannot be interpreted as an act of coercion or exploitation.”

Despite the uniformly positive approach of conference attendees towards brain death criteria, the pope’s statement was taken by many as a ringing warning.

The following February, at a separate conference on “brain death,” an international gathering of medical, neurological and philosophical experts roundly condemned the criteria, saying that they result in the deaths of patients by premature removal of organs.

Seducidos por la Muerte: Médicos y pacientes ante el suicidio asistido y la eutanasia

Editorial Planeta acaba de publicar la traducción al castellano de un clásico sobre el suicidio asistido y la eutanasia: "Seducidos por la Muerte", de Herbert Hendin.

Es la obra en que se basó el Tribunal Supremo de los Estados Unidos para establecer que no existe derecho constitucional al suicidio asistido.

No es una obra cualquiera sobre la eutanasia. Es el informe serio y científico del Director Médico de la Suicide Prevention Internacional, y Catedrático de Psiquiatría del New York Medical College, que frenó a la administración Clinton cuando se disponía a sacar una ley financiada con fondos federales. El autor fue llamado a declarar, resumiendo las conclusiones de su obra, ante el Congreso de los Estados Unidos. Herbert Hendin se había desplazado antes a Holanda para estudiar la posibilidad de legalizar la eutanasia; el resultado fue este clarificador informe, recogido en un libro que se lee como novela, y que tuvo un enorme impacto en la opinión pública norteamericana.

Una cosa es el debate social sobre este tema en los medios de comunicación, que se produce casi siempre en torno a un caso límite. Y otra cosa es el estudio serio de los resultados reales de la eutanasia en un país, con vistas a implantarla en el propio. Continua

Prof. Paul Byrne afirma que a chamada 'morte cerebral' não é a morte real

O Professor Paul A. Byrne é Neonatólogo. Professor de pediatria na Faculdade de medicina da universidade de Toledo, Ohio, e director de neonatologia e pediatria no hospital de St. Charles Mercy, Ohio (USA).

Entrevista ao Prof. Cicero Galli sobre morte cerebral e transplantes

Entrevista ao Prof. Cicero Galli de Coimbra no Congresso internacional: "Os sinais da vida. A 'morte cerebral? ainda é vida?" organizado em Roma a 19 de Fevereiro de 2009 pela Associação Famiglia Domani, American Life League, Family of the Americas Foundation, Human Life International, International Foundation for Genetic Research, Life Guardian Foundation, Northwest Ohio Guild of the Catholic Medical Association, United States Coalition for Life.

O Prof. Cicero Galli Coimbra é Neurologista clinico. Professor no Departamento de Neurologia e Neurocirúrgia na Universidade Federal de S. Paulo – UNIFESP (Brasil).