“Your “people who work in the medical field” are telling you stories or you are telling stories yourself.”
First of all, I don’t appreciate being called a liar. I have been posting on Free Republic a long time and I don’t post false or erroneous information. If you have a disagreement with what I say, that’s one thing. But don’t impugn my integrity.
Second, to all those who think that the medical profession is above any sort of chicanery just don’t know the full story. There has been a slippery slope going on for quite a while. I have been involved with issues of life for more than 20 years, and abortion is only the tip of the iceberg. Just like with any field, there are your good and your bad. The good ones are labelled as “crazies” or “liars” and that is supposed to shut them up. These people I know are the good ones. They are on the front lines as well, and they have confirmed that this does happen. Why don’t they report it? Because they would be labelled liars, just as was done here. The original story that started this discussion should be enough of an eye-opener. People who are in car accidents are not given the opportunity to recover if the families sign over the organs. As far as the organ donor workers not being affiliated with the hospitals, the hospitals know they are there. They wouldn’t be allowed to do what they do and harass families who are grieving into signing over the organs if they didn’t have the hospitals’ blessings. Within 24 hours of an accident, these people with their clipboards are already manning their posts and asking the families for the organs. They wouldn’t know who to ask if the doctors didn’t inform them of who was “brain dead”. 24 hours is certainly not enough time to determine if the person is going to come out of their comas. If this was happening after the person had been in a coma for a while, say a year, then you may agree that the person has no reasonable hope of recovery. But 24 hours is not enough time.
See my post at 117! I am a current RN and I do know there can be such pushiness to get a patient into the organ donation system faster than what is warranted. There are those whom I’ve privately labeled, “the donation true beleievers”, who were quick to get on the phone with the Organisation that co-ordinates donations.
There were recent changes in Va law with regards to what had to be done in the cases of impending demise and the Roles RN’s had to play. This young Harpy type came down to
“explain” to us that we had so much time to report a death and so much time to report when a patient had reached a Glascow Coma Scale of 4 and could not breathe with out a vent...practically threatening our licenses “under the law” ect! We were also told that we were not to tell the families of these patients of the calls made to this organization...that they would “handle it”!
She didn’t appreciate it when I asked if her organization was the only state sanctioned organiztion that did this in the state and who ran it and where did the money go. She also didn’t like it when I queried if the state regs and this organization were all properly vetted under HIPPA Federal privacy laws and were RN’s going to be protected should privacy suits be instituted. She had attempted to “delphi” me but she was rather demonsrtative of her irritation with me and since the folks I work with know that I don’t become pointed in my questioning with out cause, she finished her presentation and left!
One other questioner hit her with this fact...when breaking down for race, african Americans donation levels are less than 10 percent of their faction...the rest donate around 40 to 50 per cent and the over all donation rate hovers around 30 to 40 depending on polls and statistics from sources I’ve read.
The questioner pointed out that in terms of organ replacements...African Americans received 50 per cent of all donated(being 12 per cent of the total population) organs..the other 50 per cent went to recipients from among the other 88 percent of the population!
Blacks I speak to have a deep distrust of the whole donation system, not that many of them are above recieving a needed kidney if available. I sometimes think they have good reason to distrust it! That Harpy that “explained” our practice to us(she wasn’t even an RN) has only heightened my distrust of it!
Being brain dead and being in a coma are two different things. You say you are involved in life issue, which is great. Have you ever been involved in an organ donation situation? Do you know anything about it? You seem to imagine that just becuase the family signs a form that the organs can be donated, the deal is complete. This is only the beginning of a long process.
Family, and hospital workers do not determine the eligibility of organs for donation. Nurses can call the agency responsible, agents can obtain signatures of the family members, and doctors can begin testing. None of this ensures that the organs will be harvested. There are multiple doctors involved. Multiple results of testing must be obtained and documented. The family must offer consent, and still there are only 1% of people that qualify for organ donors. The 1% are not 24 hours into a coma, but medically dead, with no brain activity. They are almost always in ICU units, and their organs are never taken within 24 hours.
If you have any evidence to support what you are saying please provide it. I am sure you have integrity, but please evaluate your sources and provide evidence for what they are saying, or don’t post it. People’s lives are at stake here. It is far too serious for you to pass along erroneous and unsubstantiated rumors.