Thinking He Was Brain Dead Family Was Set to Give Away His Organs, Then He Held Up Two Fingers

LifeNews has repeatedly profiled cases where doctors may too quickly began cutting up patients who are not really dead to begin harvesting their organs for donations.

These kinds of cases have happened before, as supposedly “brain dead” patients have come back to life just before having their vital organs taken from them after prematurely being declared dead. Although there is nothing morally wrong with organ donations — in fact, it’s arguably a very pro-life action to take — these kinds of stories ought to remind organ donors (and any patient and their family) that doctors are too quickly declaring patients dead or too far gone to treat.

Sam Schmid, an Arizona college student who was thought to be brain dead, recovered from injuries sustained in an automobile accident in October just hours before he was slated to be killed and his organs given to other patients.

The accident took the life of his best friend and college roomate and Schmid’s injuries were thought to be so grievous that a local hospital could not treat him and he was sent to Barrow Neurological Institute at St. Joseph’s Medical Center in Phoenix to receive surgery for a life-threatening aneurysm.

As hospital officials began palliative care and talked with his parents about organ donation, Schmid began to hold up two fingers on command and started walking with the aid of a walker.

Two years ago, Sam Schmid’s close encounter with death was called a “Christmas miracle.” As he lay in a coma after sustaining massive brain injuries in a car crash, doctors were discussing organ donation with his parents and ready to take him off life support.

Schmid astounded those at his hospital bedside who thought he was brain dead, raising two fingers to signal he still had life left in him. But at the time, no one knew if the Tucson, Ariz., college student would ever return to his studies — or even walk or talk again.

Schmid was a junior and business major at the University of Arizona when he was critically wounded in an Oct. 19, 2011 five-car accident in Tucson.

He was returning from coaching basketball at his former Catholic school when a van swerved into his lane. The Jeep in which he was riding went airborne, hit a light pole and landed on its side. Schmid’s left hand and both of his femurs broke and required surgery. But he had suffered massive head injuries that are nearly always fatal.

The 21-year-old’s brain injuries were so severe that the local hospital could not treat him. He was airlifted to Barrow at St. Joseph’s Medical Center in Phoenix, where specialists performed surgery for a life-threatening aneurysm.

As hospital officials began palliative care and broached the subject of organ donation with his family, Schmid began to respond, holding up two fingers on command.

The case follows on the heels of a LifeNews report about Jimi Fritze, 43, who could hear but not talk after suffering brain hemorrhage and family surrounded his hospital bed after doctors said he would not survive.

“I heard them tell my girlfriend and my relatives that there was no hope,” Jimi Fritze, 43, told The Daily Telegraph. “I couldn’t do anything. I could only see and hear. I couldn’t move my body.”

These cases provide an example of what pro-life bioethicists like Wesley J. Smith have warned: misjudging patients as too far gone too soon and relegating them to organ donor status:

For years, organ transplant ethicists and some in the bioethics community have agitated to change the definition of death from a purely biological determination, to one based in utilitarianism and desired sociological narratives. Why mess with death? Too few organs are donated for transplant, leading to long waiting lines and the deaths of some people who might be saved were organs more readily available.

But why redefine death? The point of this reckless advocacy — although they don’t put it this bluntly — is that there are thousands of perfectly good organs being used by people who really don’t need them anymore, by which they mean patients with profound cognitive impairments who will remain unconscious or minimally aware for the rest of their lives. Why not harvest such patients, this thinking goes, for the benefit of people who could return to normal lives?

The problem is that would break the “dead donor rule,” the legal and moral pact organ transplant medicine made with society promising that vital organs would only be harvested from patients who are truly dead. Hence, if the definition of death were loosened to include, say, a diagnosis of persistent vegetative state, more organs could be obtained — and the dead donor rule could still appear to be honored, deemed essential for transplant medicine to retain the trust of society.

Of course, that would be fiction, and the redefinition actually a betrayal. What these “ethicists” really propose is killing for organs, a view now being promoted in some of the world’s most prestigious medical, science, and bioethical journals. For example, Nature recently editorialized in favor of liberalizing the rules governing brain death.

Currently, brain death requires the irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain and each of its constituent parts. Nature’s editorial claimed — without proof — that doctors obey “the spirit but not the letter, of this law. And many are feeling uncomfortable about it.”

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