Motion filed to rescind plea bargain in girl's deathAmber never regained consciousness and died Sept. 3, 2004, after a court ordered doctors to remove her from life-support.
FOR TWO TRANSPLANT PATIENTS, A DIRE COMPLICATION: WEST NILEIn the antiseptic prose of medical journals, he was "the lung recipient," she "the liver recipient."
In real life, they were two desperately ill people who received transplants last August from the same organ donor, a brain-dead accident victim. Thanks to the surgery, they had a second chance at life. Or so it seemed.
Tests found the West Nile virus.
Neither recovered. The woman who received the liver remained paralyzed and unresponsive, on a ventilator, according to her surgeon, Dr. Lewis W. Teperman, director of transplantation at New York University. After 68 days her family withdrew life support, and she died. Dr. Teperman said he did not have the family's permission to identify her.
The second patient, Dr. Sabih Aburegiaba, 69, is still alive. He is on a ventilator at a hospital in Queens, barely responsive, his prognosis uncertain and his family struggling to find the proper level of care for him.
Much more in this article that's well worth reading. One patient is showing remarkable progress. The other was killed because of the same brain damage. And what of the "brain-dead accident victim" they got their organs from? Was he/she really dead, or just brain damaged?