Posted on 09/14/2007 2:03:21 PM PDT by wagglebee
After a long fight with a degenerative disease, Ruben Navarro appeared close to death. So the hospital caring for him alerted the local transplant network, which rushed a team to the medical center to try to salvage the 25-year-old's organs.
But as Navarro hung on, tension mounted in the operating room of Sierra Vista Regional Medical Center in San Luis Obispo, Calif. With time slipping away, one of the transplant surgeons ordered repeated doses of the narcotic morphine and the sedative Ativan, jokingly calling the drugs "candy," according to police reports. Navarro eventually died, but too late for his organs to be useful.
Horrified nurses complained, prompting multiple investigations. In July, prosecutors charged Hootan Roozrokh with trying to hasten Navarro's death, marking the first time a surgeon has faced criminal charges in a transplant case.
No one thinks the Navarro case is typical, but it comes as transplant advocates are becoming increasingly aggressive in their efforts to procure hearts, livers, kidneys and other organs in the hope of saving more of the thousands of desperate Americans who die languishing on waiting lists. For some doctors, nurses and medical ethicists, it represents their worst fear -- the extreme end of a spectrum of practices that have been raising alarm in hospital wards, emergency rooms and intensive care units around the country.
"This is what we've been worrying about," said Michael A. DeVita, a University of Pittsburgh critical care specialist. "If you promote organ donation too much, people lose sight that it's a dying patient there. It's not just a source of organs. It's a person."
Organ-donation agencies condemn the Navarro case and argue that they walk a careful line between advocating effectively for those who need transplants and violating ethical boundaries meticulously calibrated to protect dying patients and their families.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
The organ harvesting business has the potential to be far more dangerous than most people realize.
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The doctors who did this deserve to spend the rest of their lives in a Level 5 Supermax prison.
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Anybody see Monty Python’s “Meaning of Life”?
That was the case with Navarro. Severely disabled, he was put on a respirator after being taken to the hospital on Jan. 29, 2006, from a nursing home, where he had been found without a pulse. When doctors told his mother, Rosa, that there was no hope, she agreed to allow him to become a donor. But she was shocked when she heard what happened next. Her son's heart kept beating even though his ventilator had been removed and the multiple doses of drugs had been administered. Roozrokh also allegedly administered through a feeding tube in Navarro's stomach an antiseptic normally used to sterilize a donor only after death. The doctors eventually gave up and wheeled him back to his room, reportedly as he frothed at the mouth and shivered.
That is grotesque, and 'harvesting' at it's worst.
At which point, I would have then sent those guy flying back through the wall...
My aunt is a retired registered nurse, and she told me long ago to never sign the organ donation card on the back of my driver's license since she knew of several cases where people were allowed to die after car wrecks to get their organs. And this was ten years ago...
I think I should be able to sell my parts to the highest bidder.
That’s why mine isn’t signed. I have no problem donating my organs, but only AFTER I’m really dead.
I will not sign for organ donation since I really don't want them harvested while I am still alive.
Removing my "organ donor" endorsement right now. Seriously.
Someone once suggested to me that I was being selfish for not signing as a donor, since I would have no use for my organs. I’ve heard too much about this kind of stuff to go along with it! Good thing to make sure relatives know this too.
Perhaps Larry Niven was a prophet?
I will not sign an organ donor card, because I have personally talked with (in real life and on FR) those who have assisted some “harvesting”. To get a good heart, the heart must be removed before it stops beating. The preferred method of harvesting organs is to take it from a donor is still living.
Having said that, things like donating a kidney, which is done most often from a healthy donor who gives one, is a great act of charity.
Hang around for a bit, there will be some here defending them any minute.
It is not that uncommon of a practice.
That is monstrous. People who do things like that are psychopaths.
About 6 years ago, a music teacher at my former high school talked to us about organ donation. She volunteered for one of the organ donation groups, as she had a good experience working with them when she donated her son’s organs after his death. She said it is untrue that they hasten death or do less to prevent death if one is an organ donor. My cousin works in a hospital, and he said that isn’t true. Articals and comments posted here have further confirmed that to me. I am fine with my organs being donated, but I will not sign my driver’s license because I don’t want them taking my organs before I’m officially dead. I’m showing this to my mom because she has it signed on her license. It makes me nervous. I told her I will tell them to donate her organs when she dies, but I want her to get full treatment.
It really disgusted me at how some of these organ donation groups when I read this article. It seems like some of these people aren’t treated as people but just a container full of organs. There seems to be an attitude that it would be better to save multiple people with one person’s organs than save that one person. Hospitals and organ donation groups need to realize this severely injured or ailing person is indeed a person, and he/she deserves full treatment.
“The organ harvesting business has the potential to be far more dangerous than most people realize.”
We don’t always know which doctors are honorable, and which are not, which is why we need to be a strong advocate for our loved ones, and get an opinion from an unbiased source and a doctor we can trust.
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