There is a funny scene in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life where a man answers the door to a couple of men in white medical uniforms there to collect his liver. He objects because he is using his liver. But since he was registered donor, they push in anyway and remove his liver.
VIDEO: "Monty Python - The Meaning of Life Live Organ Transplants" (7 min.)
A similar incident nearly occurred in Kentucky. From "Kentucky man’s organs were nearly harvested. Then doctors realized he was still alive" published by the Independent:
The organs of a Kentucky donor who had been declared dead were ready to be harvested — but then doctors made a startling discovery: he was still alive.
“He was moving around — kind of thrashing. Like, moving, thrashing around on the bed,” Natasha Miller, an organ preservationist in the operating room during the alarming October 2021 incident, told NPR. “And then when we went over there, you could see he had tears coming down. He was crying visibly.”
Miller, who works at Kentucky Organ Donor Affiliates (KODA), told the outlet that two doctors refused to perform the organ retrieval after realizing that the donor had wrongly been declared dead.
Tears and crying are a good sign the person is still alive and conscious. But get this:
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.
Moreover, the man's sister recalls that her brother had opened his eyes and was darting his eyes around as they wheeled him to the operating room.
Meanwhile, KODA maintains that the allegations that have come to light from the case are not accurate. A spokesperson told the outlet: “No one at KODA has ever been pressured to collect organs from any living patient.” The spokesperson added: “KODA does not recover organs from living patients. KODA has never pressured its team members to do so.”
Sure they don't (wink, wink, nod, nod).
The legal definition of “dead” isn’t dead enough. The are lots of people leading happy productive lives that were once legally dead. That is why I haven’t checked the organ donor box on my driver’s license.
ReplyDeleteI was involved in a situation with organ donation once. They want the organs to be alive, so they keep the patient on life support until they are removed. The only evidence that the patient is not alive is that a doctor has said so (hopefully with good reason). But it still seems rather creepy and a situation that could be abused or subject to serious mistakes, like in this story.
ReplyDeleteDepending on how precisely one describes "brain death," that could open up the organ donor field quite a lot from Democrats; how useful those organs might be, however, is another question.
ReplyDeletePeople want fresh organs, sooooooo......
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