From World Net Daily...
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A federally funded research project has described how surgeons were able to snatch the hearts from severely brain-damaged newborns only seconds after they were disconnected from life-support units and transplant the organs into other diseased infants, but the work is raising alarms from those who say the donors weren't dead yet.
The work was documented in a report in the New England Journal of Medicine today, which in an unusual move also published a series of commentaries about the study that offered harsh criticism.
"It is impossible to transplant a heart successfully after irreversible stoppage: if a heart is restarted, the person from whom it was taken cannot have been dead according to cardiac criteria. Removing organs from a patient whose heart not only can be restarted, but also has been or will be restarted in another body, is ending a life by organ removal," wrote Dr. Robert Veatch, professor of medical ethics at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University................
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WINNIPEG, Manitoba, Aug. 14 -- Keeping 84-year-old Samuel Golubchuk alive under court order was "tantamount to torture," and Anand Kumar, M.D., would have no more of it.
Calling the continued care an "abomination," the critical care physician told senior medical officials at Grace Hospital here he would refuse to accept ICU rotations that involved caring for the comatose man.
To follow the court's order, Dr. Kumar wrote in a letter of resignation, "we will likely have to continue to surgically hack away at his infected flesh at the bedside in order to keep infection at bay."
"This is grotesque," he continued. "To inflict this kind of assault on him without a reasonable hope of benefit is an abomination."
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But the rules vary from place to place. "Patchwork is the best way to describe it," Dr. Curtis said.
"There is no fundamental rule or law about how these cases are handled," Dr. Curtis said, and there's not even a consensus within the medical community.
The American Medical Association, for instance, enjoins its members to respect patient autonomy and to make "reasonable efforts" to figure out what a patient would have wanted, including consulting family members or other patient surrogates, asking ethics committees, or even going to court.
But the AMA doesn't come down on one side or the other on the issue of who makes the decision. "What most guidelines lack," said Dr. Blackmer, "is that final step -- to say, at the end of the day, when you can't come to an agreement, here's how to make the decision."
One exception to that, Dr. Curtis said, is Texas, where a state law sets out a process that governs withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment even in the face of opposition from surrogate decision-makers.
Under the Texas Advance Directives Act, a doctor can refuse to continue "inappropriate" life-support. The issue is then referred to an ethics committee and if the committee agrees with the doctor, the patient's surrogate has 10 days to either accept the ruling or find another facility that will continue the life-support.
The only role for the courts, the law says, is to extend the time limit if there's evidence that a transfer is in the works.......................
Special Report: Court-Ordered End-of-Life Care for Comatose Man Deemed Torture
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