Posted on 12/04/2010 9:44:18 AM PST by traumer
It might sound a little disturbing to some people but a new pilot program will attempt to recover kidneys from people who die at home in Manhattan.
A team of organ specialists will have about 20-minutes after a cardiac-arrest patient is declared dead to arrive at the home, check a donor registry, determine medical eligibility, obtain a family member's consent and get the person into a specialized ambulance.
A special team will monitor 9-1-1 calls about people in danger of dying and they will travel directly to a person's home without being summoned.
The program is being launched Wednesday. It could eventually lead to thousands more organs donated each year. But the five-month trial, a collaboration between Bellevue Hospital and New York City's police and fire departments, could be declared a success without a single organ being recovered, organizers say.
It's being called the Organ Donation Unit. It is being funded by a $1.5 million grant from the U. S. Department of Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA),
The team — composed of two EMTs, an organ donor family services specialist and a Bellevue emergency physician — will interact with grieving and shocked family members in the limited time available before it is too late to use a person's organs. A police detective will arrive at the scene before the team to make sure there's nothing about the death that warrants a criminal investigation.
(Excerpt) Read more at myfoxny.com ...
Sorry, but that is so old fashioned. The new and improved version is:
"Coming for your dead"
Ah yes, I can see the t.v. “public service “ messages now...
“Doing CPR is stealing an organ from someone who needs it”
“No organs to donate? We accept watches, jewelry and gold teeth”
“Save a life! Die!”
We are all in the organ farm now
Sort of like the Welcome Wagon, but they want stuff so you meet them at the door with a shotgun.
Knock-knock
"Yes?"
"We're here for your liver."
"But I'm still using it."
"This is your signature on the organ donor card?"
"Yes, but...arrrgh" as his liver is cut out.
This must be a joke. If it is not a joke then one more step has been taken towards considering people things, objects, non-humans.
Is this the one about waking up in a bathtub full of ice?
thanks for printing up the script. LOL. “you big baby.” So much more truth to this thing than I’d like to think about.
Can’t quite decide if Monty Python’s gone rogue to the dark side, or if those “indigenous” Day Of The Dead harvest festivals were all rather prescient.
Does no one see a conflict of interest, here, seriously? A lot of people are going to refuse listing themselves as organ donors, what with these Frankenwagens rolling around butchering a sudden surfeit of clinically dead.
It’s a very real fear, that medical treatment will be (whoops!) insufficient to “save” the person, but quite sufficient to “save” organs.
The profits must be tremendous to engage in such ghoulishness.
In NJ paramedics can pronouce
Had one case of 450 lb heart attack victim dies on 3rd
floor - paramedics know guy is DOA. They call our FD
for lift, had to put this whale in Stokes and carry down 3 floors to ambulance - where paramedic finally prounce him
Avoid having to wait for coroner and carry victim downstairs
This is the creepiest thing I have read in a while. Who determines if this death was “natural”? No autopsy has been performed as of yet. Where is the medical examiner to certify that a person is truly deceased. (that is what is required where I live). Does the family clean up the tissue and blood? This is just way too out there for my tastes. Just a thought.
That’s the real reason the cop is there. If you raise your voice, cuss them, walk away or try to order them off your property you’ll either be threatened with a felony or a trip to a psych ward.If you don’t do any of those things they’ll harass you till you do.But oh they’ll reconsider and let you out of those cuffs if you’ll just be reasonable and sign a consent form!
You can tell the doctors,because they’re not covered in doo-doo!
Good point. What if it was a murder? Or doesn’t that matter to these ghouls?
“What if it was murder..”
I am just thinking that if a person suddenly dies (which would be the case since organ donation is a no no with terminal cancer patients) then HOW did they die? Is it a heart attack plain and simple or one caused by a poison? If a person overdoses on medication, are the kidneys viable to anyone else anyway? Also, will there be pressure eventually placed on the EMS personnel to not “work” a person or call death prior to what is reasonable in order to get good numbers of organs? This is like some sort of horror movie.
I am a designated organ donor and a former ambulance medic so I see this idea from two positions. While I am in favor of increasing organ donation, I find it a little ghoulish to immediately approach a family who has just lost their loved one for an organ donation hardly before the body is cold. I have been at many in home deaths in more than 20 years as a medic and can tell you the family is generally numb especially if the death was unexpected. I can’t imagine going to a family who has just lost their Dad or Mom from an unexpected massive heart attack and asking them to cart off the body for quick organ donation especially after they have just minutes before witnessed medics feverishly working to save their life. They haven’t had time to even grasp their loved one’s death let alone make such a decision.
I could not agree more. It’s truly frightening.
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