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Posted on 04/26/2012 3:07:34 PM PDT by NYer
LEICESTER, England, April 25, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - According to the Daily Mail newspaper, a young British man owes his life to an insistent father who would not allow his son’s organs to be removed from his body, despite assurances from four doctors that his son could not recover from the wounds he had suffered in a recent car accident.
The Mail reports that Stephen Thorpe, then 17, was placed in a medically-induced coma following a multi-car pileup that had already taken the life of his friend Matthew, who was driving the vehicle.
Although a team of four physicians insisted that his son was “brain-dead” following the wreck, Thorpe’s father enlisted the help of a general practitioner and a neurologist, who demonstrated that his son still had brain wave activity. The doctors agreed to bring him out of the coma, and five weeks later Thorpe left the hospital, having almost completely recovered.
Today, the 21-year-old with “brain damage” is studying accounting at a local university. “‘My impression is maybe the hospital weren’t very happy that my father wanted a second opinion,” he told the Mail.
The case is similar to dozens of others LifeSiteNews has reported in recent years, in which comatose or otherwise unconscious patients are declared to be “brain dead,” or hopelessly incurable. In many cases, aggressive doctors seek the organs of the patient for harvesting.
In 2011, the Quebec Hospital Sainte Croix de Drummondville sought permission to extract the eyes of a patient who had choked on hospital food in the absence of a nurse, claiming she was “brain dead.” After the family demanded proof from physicians of her alleged condition, she regained consciousness, and recovered most of her faculties. The family declared its intention to sue the hospital.
In 2008, a 45-year-old Frenchman revived on the operating table as doctors prepared to “harvest” his organs for donation, following cardiac arrest. In the subsequent investigation by the hospital’s ethics committee, a number of doctors admitted that such cases, while rare, were well known to them.
That same year, a “brain dead” 21-year-old American, Zack Dunlap, was about to have his organs harvested when his two sisters, both nurses, decided to test the hospital’s theory that his brain was no longer functioning. Family members poked his feet with a knife and dug their fingernails under his nails, provoking strong reactions by Dunlap and proving he was conscious. He recovered completely. He later related that he was conscious and aware as doctors discussed harvesting his organs in his presence.
The term “brain death” was invented in 1968 to accommodate the need to acquire vital organs in their “freshest” state from a donor who some argue is still very much alive.
While death had previously been defined as lack of respiration and heart activity, “brain death” was judged as compatible with an otherwise living patient. “Brain death” has never been rigorously defined, and there are no standardized tests to determine if the condition exists.
Dr. John Shea, a medical advisor to LifeSiteNews.com, points out that patients diagnosed as “brain dead” often continue to exhibit brain functions.
In “Organ Donation: The Inconvenient Truth”, Shea states that the criteria for “brain death” only “test for the absence of some specific brain reflexes. Functions of the brain that are not considered are temperature control, blood pressure, cardiac rate and salt and water balance. When a patient is declared brain dead, these functions are not only still present, but also frequently active.”
A list of articles by LifeSiteNews on comotose and “brain dead” patients who unexpectedly recovered follows:
* Brain dead’ woman recovers after husband refuses to withdraw life support
* Woman Diagnosed as “Brain Dead” Walks and Talks after Awakening
* ‘Brain dead’ Quebec woman wakes up after family refuses organ donation
* Doctor Says about “Brain Dead” Man Saved from Organ Harvesting - “Brain Death is Never Really Death”
* Doctors Who Almost Dissected Living Patient Confess Ignorance about Actual Moment of Death
* New study questions “brain-death” criterion for organ donation
* Coma Recovery After 19 Years Poses Questions About Terri Schiavo
* Polish Man Wakes from 19-Year “Coma”, Talks and Expected to Walk Soon
* Man Wakes from Two-Year Coma – was Aware and Remembers Everything
* Boy in “Hopeless” Vegetative State Awakens and Steadily Improves
* Commentary: The Significance of that Case of the Man Trapped in a “Coma” for 23 Years
* Girl Once Comatose and Scheduled for Euthanasia Will Testify against Attacker
* ‘Comatose’ UK Man Chooses Life by Moving Eyes
* Woman’s Waking After Brain Death Raises Many Questions About Organ Donation
* Russian Surgeons Removing Organs Saying Patients Almost Dead Anyway
* Denver Coroner Rules “Homicide” in Organ-Donor Case
Related links:
Ping!
And this is why I will never mark my drivers license as being an organ donor. No way am I going to provide an incentive for these ghouls to prematurely end my life.
Lord help us from these PC monsters. I recall my nephew, 20 years ago, was given months to live because of a brain tumor. Well, he’s still here and serving in the military.
Cheaper to kill the kid and take his organs for others than to attempt to preserve his life.
That is what we can look forward to if Obama “Care” is allowed to remain the law of the land.
This what the headline meant to say:
Dad rescues son from ‘brain dead’ doctors wishing to harvest his organs – boy recovers completely
...or...
Kid worth more dead than alive (at least to the hospital).
Eliminate special treatment for the connected and that will fix the rest.
My half brother was on business in California about 14 years ago when he was broadsided in the rental car he was in. He was 38 years old.
He laid in a coma for a week, with no alleged brain activity, basically brain dead. My step-father had to make a decision to take him off of life support and subsequently his organs, which were all intact, were harvested and went on to help over 38 (an approximation) people in need to continue on with their lives.
This is one of life's toughest choices, fortunately for this man and his son he made the right one.
As for my step-father, did he make the right choice in giving the permission to "pull the plug"? I'm not even going to ask that question but would rather ask the recipients of Scott's lungs, liver, heart, etc....if their lives are better off because of my brother's sacrifice.
I prefer to dwell on the positive aspects of my brother's death rather than the "what if"......
This is why you NEVER sign an organ donor card!
Speaking as a nurse, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!
He lay in the waiting room for hours without being even looked at by a doctor or nurse. Finally he regained consciousness and after being told how long he had been there-got up and left the hospital and went home. At that time he was in his early 50's and in spite of this incident lived to be 81 years old when he died in his sleep.
My father also died at 81, just four weeks before he would have been 82. He had gone on disability in his mid-fifties because of arthritis which made him almost unable to stand up from a chair at one time. My mother told me twenty years after he went on disability that the family doctor had told him to get his affairs in order because he wouldn’t live to be 60. He was a carpenter and he remodeled their house when he was in his seventies and at 75 was as loose limbed as a teenage boy. Doctors also claimed he had emphysema but he was using a wheelbarrow and shovel to move dirt up until he was near 80.
Freep-mail me to get on or off my pro-life and Catholic List:
Please ping me to note-worthy Pro-Life or Catholic threads, or other threads of general interest.
Not just cheaper, more profitable. Organ transplants are big business, but hospitals need a steady stream of organs or they can’t cash in.
All you need to know about organ donation is that they can only harvest organs from living persons. If the person is dead, the organs are useless. Doesn’t take much to figure out what this “brain dead” business is about, once you know that fact.
Yes, maybe I’m just selfish, but I won’t sign one either. For some reason, I have this strange, strong will to live.
For example, suppose you wanted to donate a kidney.
The hospital makes money by the use of their facilities.
The physician makes money by performing the surgery.
The donee gets his freaking life back by getting a new organ.
And the donor is FORBIDDEN to charge for his services.
True, but it's worse than that.
There are disproportionate fat paydays for:
The "counselor" that obtains permission from the families of donors that have not indicated a choice.
The harvest surgery team.
The transport team, air and ground.
The "charity" organizations that maintain the lists and move felony prisoners and lifetime drunks like Mickey Mantle to the top.
Please no Monty Python references.
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