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Mistake to take organs from a living person was averted, witnesses say
- racked 2y agoThat is shocking. Unfortunately the article doesn't clearly describe the chain of events. The patient was declared brain dead but later showed signs of life. Did the doctors resign because they suspected foul play - i.e. someone knew the patient was not brain dead but greenlit it anyway - or did they simply quit due to the trauma?
- alluro2 2y ago"So the coordinator calls the supervisor at the time. And she was saying that he was telling her that she needed to ‘find another doctor to do it’ – that, ‘We were going to do this case. She needs to find someone else,’ ” Miller says." "Martin says doctors sedated the patient when he woke up and plans to recover his organs proceeded." It indicates that they tried to continue the organ retrieval even after learning that the patient is alive.
- racked 2y agoThank you, I must have read over it.
- Yeul 2y ago[flagged]
- metaphor 2y ago> A for profit hospital... The hospital[1] under scrutiny is in fact a 501(c)(3). [1] https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/610444707 https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/610...
- renewiltord 2y ago[flagged]
- smegger001 2y agoand we know paying people increases the supply of willing donors because we allow it with blood. Most of the worlds donated blood plasma comes from the US because we allow compensating the donors. i see know reason not to allow paying for other organs that wont kill the donor. why not allow selling extra kidneys pieces of liver, a lung. pay for the all of the donors medical cost + a large enough a sum of money to make it worth it for the would be donor.
- XorNot 2y agoI've got a better idea: allow embryonic stem cell research, pump money into tissue growth/printing research and let's just solve this stupid problem at the source.
- kstrauser 2y agoThere are some real moral qualms there. A healthy person can spare some plasma and they’ll make more quickly. You can’t grow a replacement kidney. If organ sales were legal, people are certain to sell them for horrific reasons. Take the dumbass who sold a kidney to buy an iPhone: https://www.vice.com/en/article/teen-who-sold-a-kidney-for-an-iphone-is-now-bedridden-for-life/ https://www.vice.com/en/article/teen-who-sold-a-kidney-for-a... But is it good to sell a kidney to pay for a relative’s medical care because insurance doesn’t cover their condition? How about a piece of liver for a house down payment? Or stop complaining about tuition and donate a lung like your cousin did. I’ve played Cyberpunk. Selling organs is a big step toward a future I’d prefer not to experience.
- smegger001 2y agoor if that's a concern just give a $1000 per year pay out to everyone who agrees to be organ donor after they die.
- throwaway48476 2y ago
- OutOfHere 2y agoThe OPO should clearly be charged with attempted murder and investigated for actual murder. Odds are good that they already have murdered people in this way, not only in Kentucky, but elsewhere too. --- > She says she became concerned when TJ appeared to open his eyes and look around as he was being wheeled to the operating room. > DONNA RHORER: It was like it was his way of letting us know, you know, hey, I'm still here. > STEIN: But Rhorer and other family members were told that it was just a common reflex. Looking around is clearly more than a reflex assuming the person is not in a vegetative state. The person should never have been brought to the operating room in the first place. If such incidents are allowed to slide, the next thing you know would be the willful, intentional, and preplanned murder of alleged overdosing admissions to facilitate organ harvesting.
- kstrauser 2y agoThat’s not certain. Someone in a persistent vegetative state (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetative_state https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetative_state) may open their eyes and move them, all while lacking the parts of their brain that would consciously trigger those movements. There’s alive, and there’s living. It’s possibly for someone’s body to be alive even though the person is completely and forever gone. Not saying that’s what happened here, only that someone appearing to be looking around doesn’t necessarily mean there’s a person inside that body choosing to do so. Personal source: I saw a beloved family member appear to look around, even while an EEG showed that there was zero activity in the parts of her hurt brain that we’d think of as “her”. It’s terrible to behold. But yes, it can also be just a common reflex. (I have zero intent to defend the hospital. I’m replying to that 1 specific thing you said, but am absolutely not saying the hospital was in the right.)
- rapidaneurism 2y agoI would not class someone in a persistent vegetative state as brain dead. My understanding is that for organ harvesting to take place the subject has to be brain dead.
- 2y ago
- bb88 2y agoHumans have had a long history with trying to declare people dead and getting it wrong. Occasionally a dead body would be exhumed from the ground only to discover scratch marks on the lid of the coffin. This led to inventions like safety coffins which allowed people to live until help could arrive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safety_coffin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safety_coffin Today, we don't need it inventions like that anymore, largely because the embalming process ensures the recently deceased are in fact deceased.
- duskwuff 2y ago"Despite the fear of burial while still alive, there are no documented cases of anybody being saved by a safety coffin." The safety coffin and other similar devices from the early 19th century are best understood as an odd, transient cultural phenomenon, not a response to a real need.
- orangeartist 2y ago[dead]
- rightbyte 2y agoThat doesn't say much though. If being burried alive was rare and having a being-burried-alive-safety-bell was rare. A combination would have been rare rare. I guess rodents could leave scratch marks that would look like nails, too.
- jillesvangurp 2y agoEmbalming is largely a cultural thing. It's very rare in Europe for people to get embalmed. At least in the places I've lived. Also, the chemicals involved are a bit nasty and there's actually a trend for people to have their remains disposed off in a more sustainable way. E.g. composting is popular lately. My aunt was buried in a nature cemetery a few months ago. Very beautiful place.
- hilux 2y agoFunny. Just a few minutes ago a youtube snippet of Law & Order taught me the alleged "first rule of composting": No meat! I guess I should unlearn that.
- throwup238 2y agoJohn Oliver did an episode on organ transplants and it is pretty much a clusterf*ck: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tn7egDQ9lPg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tn7egDQ9lPg It varies state by state but some of the programs are pretty bad, it's no surprise that something like this happened.
- Hutrio 2y ago[dead]
- linotype 2y agoWelp, time to remove myself from the donor pool if I “die”.
- dash2 2y agoI read this as "Kenya hospital" and thought, wow, that's bad even for a developing country. But no.
- chgs 2y agoThere’s three levels of healthcare 1) developed counties 2) developing counties 3) the USA
- Mistletoe 2y agoHopefully this gets publicized to the ends of the earth so it prevents it happening again.
- khafra 2y agoIf we're making specific wishes, we should wish that it doesn't happen again but stays fairly private--after all, lots of people still die for need of donor organs, and if lots of organ donors decide they'd rather be safe from naive utilitarian-dilemma doctors, that number will grow.
- OutOfHere 2y agoIn other words, you are okay with secretly murdering other people to steal their organs. There is no set of ethics that allows it.
- khafra 2y ago1. You missed the part where I said "we should wish that it doesn't happen again." It's right up there in the first sentence. It's not ok to murder 1 person to save 5. 2. Naive utilitarians may think it's ok, because they don't consider second-order effects. If you do consider second-order effects, then even for a utilitarian it could only be ok if the world was already in a terrible, untrusting state where people would rather die than go to a doctor without an armed escort.
- OutOfHere 2y ago> we should wish that it doesn't happen again but stays fairly private As above, you merely wished for it to not come out into the public view. That's what you meant by "didn't happen again". It's exactly what a criminally minded wannabe murderer would say.
- im3w1l 2y agoUnfortunatly trying to keep it on the downlow just serves to enable it. We have seen this in many communities that tries to hide wrongdoing. Dirty laundry needs to be aired.
- ffujdefvjg 2y ago> Dr. Robert Cannon, a transplant surgeon at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, described a similar incident during the congressional hearing where Martin’s letter was disclosed. It happened at a hospital outside of Alabama. > “We actually were in the operating room. We had actually opened the patient and were in the process of sort of preparing their organs, at which point the ventilator triggered and so the anesthesiologist at the head of the table spoke up and said, ‘Hey, I think this patient might have just breathed,’” Cannon later told NPR in an interview. “If the patient breathes, that means they’re not brain dead.” > Nevertheless, a representative from the OPO wanted to proceed anyway, Cannon says. He refused. > “We were kind of shocked that an OPO person would have so little knowledge about what brain death means that they would say, ‘Oh, you should just go ahead.’ And we thought, ‘No. We’re not going to take any risk that we murder a patient.’ Because that’s what it would be if that patient was alive.” OPO should be charged with attempted homicide.
- g-b-r 2y agoEveryone should, but instead they're worried of not scaring other people? The way you reassure them is by investigating every case extensively, punishing adequately those who tried to push through, and fixing the faults of the protocol
- squidgedcricket 2y agoWhat do you mean by everyone? The MDs sound fine, as soon as a breath is seen they drop the scalpel and refuse to murder anyone.
- g-b-r 2y agoYes, I meant those with strong responsibilities for what happened
- soneil 2y ago> When she asks TJ about what happened, she says he says: “Why me?” That's the line that turned my stomach. I think that's where it really sank in just how not-dead they're talking about here.
- aidos 2y agoWell there’s the trolley dilemma up close and personal. I imagine those out there in the field have to think about this a lot more than the rest of us. Edit: removed link as was tangentially related
- throwup238 2y agoDoctors take an oath to do no harm. While they may triage frequently, they don’t explicitly sacrifice one living patient for another. The people playing the trolley game are the organ transplant board and the nonprofit in charge of the transplants for the state, which seriously screwed up here and tried to pressure doctors into doing harm.
- AStonesThrow 2y agoActually, they do not. It's not part of the Hippocratic Oath. They removed the abortion part too, y'know. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocratic_Oath https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocratic_Oath
- throwup238 2y agoWell, shit. That’s what I get for listening to House. I didn’t know there was an abortion part. Do they at least learn the classical version at school and leave the modern one for the professional oath?
- pas 2y agoit's unclear even what it ever meant (except for the most literal meaning) """ The interpreted AD 275 fragment of the oath contains a prohibition of abortion that is in contradiction to original Hippocratic text On the Nature of the Child, which contains a description of an abortion, without any implication that it was morally wrong,[16] and descriptions of abortifacient medications are numerous in the ancient medical literature.[17] The oath's stance on abortion was unclear even in the ancient world where physicians debated whether the specification of pessaries was a ban on simply pessaries, or a blanket ban on all abortion methods. """
- tessierashpool9 2y agoyou cannot harvest most organs from a completely dead body. that means the body of a donor is often still breathing and has the heart beating, but the brain is diagnosed as dead. that's why "dead" donors are even medicated and shackled to reduce disturbance by detrimental stress symptoms and even defensive body movements ... all of those of course being on the level of a headless chicken still running. at least that's the theory.
- perihelions 2y agoI wonder if mainstream social media platforms would choose to downrank this story, and others like it. The organization in question (AOPO), that pushed forward to kill the drug-overdose victim and harvest their organs, cries that they're a victim of "malicious misinformation and defamatory attacks based on hearsay". Do the social media employees listen to that? If highly-credentialed, national medical nonprofits go to Meta or Google and allege something is "misinformation", is that an automatic "yeah sure, we'll suppress it and limit its reach"? In the alternative: if they look into it, and realize donors will stop registering if these news articles are widely publicized, would they go ahead anyway and censor true facts, out of utilitarian logic? That would be consistent with the ethics reasoning those corporations have used in the past.
- metalman 2y agoMy father worked as a forensic pathologist and would talk about various things.... one of the house hold taboos were motorcycles they were banned,outright with the term of reference bieng "donercycle" especialy in areas with no helmet laws,young healthy strong people,often in pairs,who get hit in the head,not quite dead,yet.....,minimal intervention will keep the bodys warm and breathing,till arangements can be made in larger centers this will be routine,every day
- stonethrowaway 2y agoYou’ll have to share more I'm sure your father had stories galore.
- zcw100 2y agoIf you want to jump into the ethics cesspool try taking a look into living donors.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- ETH_start 2y agofrom: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/kentucky-organ-transplant-declared-dead-b2631194.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/kentucky-o... "In the operating room, Miller recalled the case coordinator phoning her supervisor at KODA for help once they saw signs of life. The supervisor insisted that the case coordinator needed to “find another doctor to do it,” Miller recalled." Absurd. The supervisor needs to be charged with attempted murder, and the entire medical system needs to be restructured to change the incentives and accountability mechanisms. That something so clearly murderous can take place in a seemingly mundane manner speaks to healthcare being deeply dysfunctional at a systemic level. Though I haven't seen anything as obvious and cruel as this, I have seen pretty extreme lack of regard for patients in healthcare systems around the world, so it's not just in the US.