Posted on 03/04/2009 4:30:31 PM PST by BykrBayb
The parents of an 18-year-old Ohio man who suffered a brain injury while snowboarding claim in a lawsuit that doctors at a northwestern Pennsylvania hospital intentionally killed him so they could harvest his organs.
The lawsuit claims that Hamot Medical Center doctors and a representative of the Center For Organ Recovery and Education caused Gregory Jacobs' death by administering medication and by removing his breathing tube, causing him to suffocate.
"But for the intentional trauma or asphyxiation of Gregory Jacobs, he would have lived, or, at the very least, his life would have been prolonged," the lawsuit said.
The suit was filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Pittsburgh by Jacobs' parents, Michael and Teresa Jacobs, of Bellevue, Ohio. It seeks more than $5 million for their son's pain and suffering, medical bills and funeral expenses, plus punitive damages.
Lucia Conti, a Hamot spokeswoman, said the hospital had not seen the lawsuit, but its policy is to not comment on litigation. The Center for Organ Recovery and Education, a Pittsburgh-based organization that helps hospitals procure donated tissue, also declined to comment.
Jacobs fell on March 8, 2007, while snowboarding at Peek 'n Peak Ski Resort in Findley Lake, N.Y., and was flown to the Erie hospital, the lawsuit said.
The suit claims Hamot contacted the Center for Organ Recovery and Education about the donation of Jacob's organs even though his parents, who were at the hospital, wanted him to live. CORE directed that Jacob's organs be removed in the absence of a valid consent, the suit said.
"Gregory was alive before defendants started surgery and suffocated him in order to harvest his organs" including his heart, liver and kidneys, according to the suit.
The suit said Jacobs "experienced neither a cessation of cardiac activity nor a cessation of brain activities when surgeons began the procedures for removing his vital organs."
The suit said the Center for Organ Recovery and Education benefited by obtaining Jacob's organs "for transfer and sale to other individuals, who then paid money, a portion of which went to CORE, for the wrongful procurement of the organs."
That’s paranoid. Name the poster, if true.
If those are truely the facts of the case, everybody involved would be frog marched for the media and charged with first degree murder, not sued for wrongful death.
That would be the kind of case upon which DAs build entire political careers. Rudy got his started by bringing down some big mobsters. A murdering surgeon and OR team conviction would be worth at least Atorney General if not Governor.
Wrongful death? Are you serious? The plaintiffs are claiming the docs killed the patient for his organs. That’s why the article was posted. The claim is that the docs will kill you to harvest your organs.
How about religious types who can't seem to let it go, even though they constantly preach about some glorified afterlife?
By the way, I was not talking about all disabled people, just people without significant brain function. As to whether this young man had it or not, I guess we'll see as the case progresses. At this point, it just looks like a shyster trying to make a few bucks off of someone's grief.
You go spend the rest of your life as a vegetable, ObamaCare might or might not pay for it.
You obviously don’t know the definition of paranoid. Since it actually happened, and like I said, one of them admitted it to JR and was banned for a couple years, I don’t have anything to prove to a nobody. And the point is that the animosity from the left has been ongoing. It isn’t anything new on this thread. They didn’t just suddenly, out of the blue, get offended by the truth. The death cultists have been flaming the pro-lifers for years, and getting offended when we don’t cave. They’ve formed groups to organize their efforts, and whined when the groups fell apart for one reason or another. Sometimes they get banned. Sometimes their blogs get shut down. Sometimes their groups just become extinct. And they’re always bitter, and quick to be offended. The anti-freeper site where the trolls registered under my name has since gone belly up. There was another anti-freeper site where some of them said some pretty nasty things about Jim & John Robinson. They had a falling out, and one of them posted the link to the their “private” conversations. I enjoyed showing that to JR, and I especially enjoyed staying up all night, watching them get zotted. All of this played out on the public forum. If you missed it, that’s too bad. But a lot of freepers and lurkers didn’t miss it. And I’m not about to start pretending I didn’t see it.
So your hatred only extends to people with significant brain injuries and people who believe in God. Why are you registered at a pro-life Christian forum? We are all guests at Jim Robinson’s site. What kind of person pees on their host’s floor?
Hmmm....all I said was, name the poster, if true. What animosity from “the left” are you seeing on this thread? Name the leftist poster, BB.
So far, just a lot of blather, and some pretty thin pro-life credential claims, from you.
If it is murder, the DA makes the charges.
They are filing a wrongful death tort.
The two are completely different. The claim of murder indicate they plan on claiming an intentional tort which allows them to collect triple damages.
The claim is about as likely as your local mechanic killing you for your muffler.
I’m a critical care RN and work part-time with an OPO (organ procurement organization). I help establish the review work to determine status and I do family approaches.
You can take the article at face value if you like. In fact, many things in the report are not true. I know this for a fact because what is described aren’ physically possible. The article is incredibly inconsistent with reality.
In addition, the description given here that the parents were pulled aside and the dad signed against the mother’s will is simply not possible. In order to proceed, all members at the nearest and same level of relationship, must agree. For example, if the patient has a signed donor card: done. Next is spouse - only one, so only one consent needed. Next is grown children - all must sign. If one refuses, donation doesn’t happen. Next is parents - same deal. Both sign or nada.
Working in health care, there are stages of grief and sometimes people do not react appropriately to reality. Sometimes grief concocts a fantasy almost certainly distorted by the presence of a lawyer. I’ve seen that, over and over again. When people do not want to hear the truth, they can - and do - convince themselves that they heard all wild manner and assortment of things.
Had this very thing happen this weekend (not related to donation - my f/t job is critical care): family member told repeatedly his spouse about to die. Complained bitterly that he wasn’t being given “the right” information. The right information would be that she was going to be just fine. She wasn’t. That’s the problem.
Organ donation saves thousands of lives a year and are ALWAYS retrieved from people who are brain dead. I am very familiar with the process, and I’m signed up to be a donor. So is my wife.
I have complete confidence, based on the description given in the article, that this young man was dead. Disagree? Go to school for 4 yrs, and get 15 yrs of experience in critical care and organ donation, and then argue with me.
I AM an expert in this field, and, YOU are wrong. So is the article.
We have Jewish people on this site, and as far as I've been aware, atheists and agnostics have also been welcome here. It's the vegetative bodies without brain functioning that are peeing on the floor, when their diaper gets out of joint.
From the article: “caused Gregory Jacobs’ death by administering medication and by removing his breathing tube, causing him to suffocate.” “Gregory was alive before defendants started surgery and suffocated him in order to harvest his organs” including his heart, liver and kidneys, according to the suit.”
Impossible. Removing the tube or “suffocating” him would serve the purpose of depriving those organs of oxygen. The kidneys might survive such an ordeal (they can survive much longer outside the body), but, as described, you have just killed off the patient, including his heart and liver. If the heart and liver aren’t hyper-oxygenated prior to removal, and immediately cooled, they die long before they can be transplanted. The article is simply wrong. Patients remained ventilated throughout the procedure.
In fact, you’ve already been told this, in this thread.
There is no medication that can be given to “suffocate” a patent in order to transplant organs. In fact, the whole purpose of transplanting organs from brain dead people on ventilators is that ventilation through-out the matching process and through-out recovery is necessary to keep those organs alive.
The process described in the lawsuit and article is, by definition, antagonistic to organ procurement. The article and lawsuit is directly saying that the hospital killed those organs in order to take them.
From the article: “The suit said Jacobs “experienced neither a cessation of cardiac activity nor a cessation of brain activities when surgeons began the procedures for removing his vital organs.” “The suit said the Center for Organ Recovery and Education benefited by obtaining Jacobs’ organs “for transfer and sale to other individuals, who then paid money, a portion of which went to CORE, for the wrongful procurement of the organs.”
Fact: cessation of cardiac activity is besides the point as THE POINT is to keep cardiac activity until recovery in order to preserve the heart. Cessation of brain activity must be verified by 3 distinct and independent governing bodies: the donor’s hospital, the OPO (organ donation group), and the receiving pt’s doctors (flown in for the recovery). The chances of 3 independent organization being wrong, or in conspiracy, as opposed to an aggrieved family misinterpreting events, is simply not credible enough to consider.
The OPO is a non-for profit. The salaried employees of the OPO are not going to “make a profit” from a donation. Neither are non-existent shareholders. There is simply no profit mechanism to encourage dishonesty. The OPO employees are paid, regardless of donation. If I make a family approach, I get paid regardless of a yes or no. There is no personal financial incentive to attain one answer over the other. (There is a moral imperative - saving lives - but not at the expense of another life. This young man was dead.)
The events described in the lawsuit are factually wrong. It is that simple. The young man was dead. The accounts of medication and suffocation could not have happened in conjunction with donation. NOT. PHYSICALLY. POSSIBLE.
Thanks. Great posts.
How does that work? Do you work to save the patient right up until shift change, and then switch to the other team?
I help establish the review work to determine status and I do family approaches.
Do you work on determining the patients' status while providing critical care, or after you've changed hats? Which hat are you wearing while you're trying to sweet talk the families into donating organs? Do you wait until after shift change, or do you make these requests while still working for the team that's supposed to be trying to save the patient's life?
You haven't told me anything that suggests there's no corruption. I don't believe the corrupt individuals are in the majority, but there obviously is some corruption. If the organ harvesting industry would police itself better and cut down on corruption, there'd be more willing donors. Part of the problem is that the concept of organ transplants is appealing not only to people who honestly want to improve health care, but also to ghouls who have no respect for people they think of as useless eaters and stuffed cabbages.
The guy was brain dead. If you miss the sarcasm one more time, we're going to harvest yer organs.
Honestly, it’s hard telling one person’s sarcasm from anothers heart felt belief. We have veared about as far from reality as humanly posible.
“How does that work? Do you work to save the patient right up until shift change, and then switch to the other team?”
Vile, ugly, uncalled for.
“How does that work? Do you work to save the patient right up until shift change, and then switch to the other team?”
No. They are 2 different jobs. I never take care of any patient in both capacities. It would be a conflict of interest. Nice try.
I’m an expert, a professional and I save lives, even (especially) with donation. I make very little money with my donation hat (for the record, less than 2k of my 93k worth of salary last year). I don’t do it for the money. I do it because it is a Godly, Christian and morally right thing to do to be an active participant in saving lives.
You’ve been told time and time again that the article and lawsuit has technical holes in it, readily observable by experts like me. That doesn’t fit your viewpoint, so you dismiss fact for hyperbole. Just like an Obama-voter would. Conservatives and Republicans are SUPPOSED to care more about fact and substance than hyperbole and showmanship.
You scream loudly in this thread. It’s evident. However. You intentionally, repeatedly, and conveniently ignore the fact that THE FACTS do not support your arguments.
You’re free to have whatever OPINION you want. You are NOT free to substitute opinion for fact. The FACT is that the lawsuit in question is technically impossible and so all the subsequent conclusions you reach are based on clearly tainted data.
Give it a rest. Ziravan knows what he is talking about.
The court will decide if the hospital was in the wrong. Not people on some message board.
As for cessation of cardiac activity, that is still needed to perfuse the organs so that they can be USED for transplant. It is independent of whether he suffered brain death.
I've never heard of that. I am under the impression that the definition of brain death was necessary for organ removal to be ethical before cellular death could occur.
Honey, get over yourself. I've been here a few more years than you under this name, and earlier under another. You barely register on my radar, but rest assured, I'll avoid your junk in the future. I mean it, you give pro-life a bad name.
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