The Ubiquitous Insidious Tentacles of Abortion

Under the euphemistic banner of "reproductive rights" "reproductive health" and/or "pro-choice", etc, very little is said about the physical, psychological, and spiritual consequences  of the giant octopus that is abortion despite the fact that it has extended its insidious tentacles into each and every one of our lives, either directly or indirectly. Because even if you have not experienced an abortion, it's almost certain you have a relationship --daughter, granddaughter, girlfriend, wife, mother, sister, niece, friend, co-worker, etc.--with someone who has, and just like the ripples that spread from a single pebble cast into a pond, small waves ripple outwardly and incrementally after each and every abortion, affecting every potential relation to that innocent life who never had a chance.

Of course, the negative impact of abortion on the mother's physical, psychological and spiritual health far outweighs the impact on everyone else. The multiple physical and emotional complications of the procedure can be life-changing insofar as the woman may experience:

• damage to the cervix,  
• scarring of the uterine lining,  
• perforation of the uterus,  
• damage to other organs, 
• inability to conceive in the future,  
• higher rates of miscarriage and premature birth  in subsequent pregnancies,

and in studies across the United States and in other countries, it has been found that women who have had abortions have 

• increased their risk of getting breast and/or cervical cancer by over 50 percent.  

 Regarding cancer, the same is not true for pregancies terminated naturally--miscarriage--because unlike induced abortion, the mother's hormone levels never reach that of a normally developing pregnancy.

Moreover, it's been found that abortion before the birth of a first child is, in particular, highly carcinogenic, because as most of us know, early first full term pregnancy lowers a woman’s risk of getting breast cancer, so if that pregnancy is terminated unnaturally, that protection not only disappears, the abortion is potentially weaponized to turn against the mother in the future. In other words, women who abort their first pregnancy not only don’t get the protective effects of a first full-term pregnancy and don’t receive the protective effects of breast feeding, they've increased their chances of getting cancer, experiencing infertility, etc. over and above that of never having gotten pregnant in the first place.

Keep in mind that less than 1% of all abortions (60 million since 1973) occur because of rape, incest, birth defects or to save the life of the mother, so the use of this argument is very obviously a smoke screen. Moreover, abortion to save the mother’s life was legal before convenience abortion was legalized and would continue to be if abortion were made illegal again.

Abortion Cancer Link

The first study to find the link between abortion and cancer came out in 1957--over 60-years ago--yet the billion dollar cancer foundations/organizations, the mainstream media, the medical industrial complex, Planned Parenthood, etc. not only stay silent and refuse to warn the public, they actively engage in deceiving the public.

 In fact, the abortion breast cancer link in some of these statistically robust studies confirm abortion is stronger than any other risk factor for breast cancer such as advanced age, having a family history of breast cancer, being childless, etc..

“Gill pointed out that the Surgeon General decided to require warning labels on packs of cigarettes highlighting the link between smoking and birth defects when there were only seven studies that showed such a link.

Today, there are more than seventy-eight studies showing a link between abortion and breast cancer and yet most women remain unaware that there is any connection.

In 1989, one study (Holly L. Howe et al., “Early Abortion and Breast Cancer Risk among Women under Age 40,” International Journal of Epidemiology 18, no. 2 (1989): 300-304) relied on New York state medical records reported that abortion increased a woman’s risk of getting breast cancer by 90%.

Then, in 1996, Dr. Joel Brind (J. Brind et al., “Induced abortion as an independent risk factor for breast cancer: a comprehensive review and meta-analysis,” Journal of Epidemiology  Community Health 50 (1996): 481-496) combined the statistics from 23 different worldwide studies and found a 30% increase of breast cancer risk among women who chose abortion after already giving birth and a 50% increase of breast cancer risk among women who chose abortion before giving birth.

Another study (A.E. Laing et al., “Breast cancer risk factors in African-American women: the Howard University Tumor Registry experience,” Journal of the National Medical Association 85, no. 12 (1993): 931-939) done on African-American women by researchers at Howard University showed that African-American women over 50 were almost five times more likely to get breast cancer if they had abortions compared with women who had not.

“Fifty-eight out of 74 worldwide studies dating back to 1957 have shown that abortion increases a woman’s risk of getting breast cancer. Nineteen of the 24 studies done on women from the United States show an increased risk of breast cancer associated with abortion.

and

“In 2014 the prestigious Medical Journal Cancer, Causes, Control published a huge systematic review and meta-analysis of 36 studies across China. They found that women who have at least one abortion, have a substantial 44% increased risk for getting breast cancer; compared to women who did not have an abortion.

Yet,

“while the media is comfortable telling women not to take hormone replacement therapy because of the increased risk of breast cancer, it refuses to extend the same logic to abortion and its effects on estrogen levels in the body. If both result in increased estrogen levels without a subsequent maturation of breasts’ cells, then logically both can result in increased breast cancer risk."

The Power of Words to Deceive Humanity is Unmistakable.

As George Orwell said, “If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought,” and as he predicted, language is growing ever more deceitful every day.

“Given such a grave situation, we need now more than ever to have the courage to look the truth in the eye and to call things by their proper name, without yielding to convenient compromises or to the temptation of self-deception. In this regard, the reproach of the Prophet is extremely straightforward: **“Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness” **(Is 5:20). -Evangelium Vitae “The Gospel of Life”, n. 58

Since the landmark decision issued in 1973--Roe v. Wade, the abortion industry has profited immensely from the approximate 1.4 million lives it takes every single year, of which more than half of those "choosing" abortion are younger than 25 years old. (52% to be exact). It accomplishes this by the subversive use of language, attempting to minimize the reality of abortion, using convenient doublespeak and replacing realistic terminology with euphemisms to assure and assuage the gullible public and to cloak its menacing presence in "liberty," "freedom" and "choice."

For instance, when a woman is pregnant and she wants the baby, she will say "I'm having a baby" no matter where she is in her pregnancy. However, when she doesn't want the baby, they call what they want to destroy “tissue.”

Abortion and Systematic Eugenics

Abortion is one of the most identified liberal causes of modern politics, right up there with equal rights for women, African Americans and other minorities. Yet, the founders of the abortion movement were racists who despised the poor, and who advocated abortion as a means of eliminating the poor and undesired races.

We most associate eugenics with the Nazis, but the term "eugenics" was coined in the mid 1800’s by Francis Galton, the cousin of Charles Darwin, and became a very popular movement to create a society in which those who were considered “superior” would reproduce, while those who were deemed “inferior” would be strongly and sometimes forcibly encouraged not to reproduce. Margaret Sanger, founder of American Birth Control League, which later changed its name to Planned Parenthood, and member of the American Eugenics Society, was a strong suppoter of the eugenics movement. She even met with members of the Klan, and supported the use of sterilization to rid the planet of the “unfit.”

In Margaret Sanger’s “Birth Control and Racial Betterment,” the Planned Parenthood founder links the goals of eugenics with her own goals of promoting birth control:

“We who advocate Birth Control, on the other hand, lay all our emphasis upon stopping not only the reproduction of the unfit but upon stopping all reproduction when there is not economic means of providing proper care for those who are born in health. …While I personally believe in the sterilization of the feeble-minded, the insane and syphilitic, I have not been able to discover that these measures are more than superficial deterrents when applied to the constantly growing stream of the unfit… Eugenics without Birth Control seems to us a house builded upon the sands. It is at the mercy of the rising stream of the unfit….

In 1932, Sanger called for the poor and those she considered to be “morons and immoral” to be shipped to colonies where they would live in “Farms and Open Spaces” dedicated to brainwashing these so-called “inferior types” into having what Sanger called better “moral conduct.”

In Sanger's book "Pivot of Civilization", she referred to the urban poor, and their increasing numbers, as "an ever widening margin of biological waste." (p.134.), and one of her mottos was "More [children] from the fit, less from the unfit." (p.104 & 179.) Margaret Sanger wasn't the only founder of the abortion movement with racist and eugenicist ideals. Co-founders and board member Lothrup Stoddard wrote the book The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy, which was reviewed favorably in Birth Control Review, and co-founder and board member, C. C. Little, was president of the Third Race Betterment Conference, and he advocated preserving the purity of "Yankee stock" through limiting the births of non-Whites.

It's significant that Planned Parenthood continues to support Sanger with no qualifiers.

“But has Planned Parenthood changed? It is significant to note that Planned Parenthood has never distanced itself from the vision and ideology of its founder. Successive presidents of the organization have praised her work, including Faye Wattleton, who said, "As we celebrate the 100th birthday of Margaret Sanger, our courageous leader, we should be very proud of what we are and what our mission is. It is a very grand mission; abortion is only the tip of the iceberg." (Faye Wattleton, president Planned Parenthood Federation of America, speech, February 5, 1979.)

One can only wonder how abortion rights came to be adopted by liberals in the Democratic Party, or any other party. It is difficult to image how it came to be identified with other liberal causes. Through a slick media campaign and effective sloganeering, Planned Parenthood painted abortion as a compassionate and caring alternative to childbirth. Their motivation however may be altogether different. It seems that abortion still today, rather than being seen as a way of helping the poor and minorities, is considered the easiest solution for our economic problems. Don't help the poor, just eliminate them.

Moreover, on par with the eugenics movement of the late 19th and early 20th century, advances in biotechnology have made the possibility of "desinger babies" almost certain. The technology to choose socially advantageous  characteristics of your child using a process called pre-implantation genetic diagnosis already exists. As it is, pre-screening gives parents the choice to eliminate babies who fail to meet their standards or desires.  As it is, with the pressure to produce "superior" or "trophy" offspring, "helicopter" and "snow plow" parents try to transform their children into "achievement machines." In this kind of consumerist environment where survival of the fittest is fully embraced "mistakes" or "unfits" are and will continue to be aborted as the dehumanizing of socitiey continues to escalate. Iceland has nearly eliminated children with Down syndrome through systematic abortion, and in the U.S., it is estimated that the vast majority of babies diagnosed with Down syndrome are aborted.

“James Hughes, a bioethicist and director of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, says that the right to choose a child’s traits, cosmetic or not, should be part of a parent’s basic reproductive freedoms. Reproductive freedoms shouldn’t apply just to contraception and abortion rights, Hughes tells Big Think. “They also include the freedom to have children, and the kind of children we prefer.”

According to the history books, the Nazis lost the war, yet, eugenics is not only alive and well, it's accelerating beyond the Nazi's wildest dreams, and abortion is one of its most efficacious tools, or dare I say, weapons.

Abortion and Population Control

In what some tout as an overpopulated world, some advocate the right to an abortion in the cases of overpopulation, poverty, and financial burden, so isn't abortion justified for population control and to ease the financial and emotional burden a child may put on a family? On society?

First of all, overpopulation is a Myth It’s been calculated that the entire world population of 7 billion people could be placed in one gigantic city within the borders of the state of Texas. Our problem is not too many people and not enough resources, very simply put, it's a problem of waste, greed, government inefficiency, and distribution of resources.

Secondly, the European and U.S. birthrate are below replacement levels. Consider that zero population growth requires women must bear 2.1 children. Well, since 1972, there have only been two years where the fertility rate has reached at least 2.1 children. In fact, it's gotten so bad that several countries around the world, including Germany, Singapore, Japan, and Russia, even offer prospective parents incentives for having a baby.

“Contrary to what you might hear, the most pressing problem in country after country today is not overpopulation, but underpopulation. In a time of fiscal austerity, the last thing that we need to be doing is spending more tax dollars to drive down the birth rate, reducing the amount of human capital available, and making us all poorer in the long run--Steven W. Mosher, President of the Population Research Institute (PRI)

If nothing else, legalized abortion has resulted in over 60 million fewer taxpayers in America to support the elderly.



Many abortion laws lay down a stage of pregnancy after which abortion is unlawful, yet as you can see from the picture above, how early in its life the baby begins to acquire human characteristics. At the moment of conception, the embryo receives its own unique genetic code, distinct from that of its mother or father, from the moment a sperm fertilizes an egg, a new individual of the human species is formed and the innate sacredness of human life is evident, a life that can receive and react to personal care from others, a minimal mark of a human being. The evidence of that uniqueness supports the belief that ensoulment takes place at conception, and even if you are unsure that this is true, isn't it always better to err on the side of life? In other words, as long as the mother's life is not in danger, isn't it always better to err on the side of life?

“All the DNA is there from conception and the heart begins to beat four weeks after conception!

Why does the mainstream media not only completely ignore the risks of abortion, but promote flawed studies to counteract the evidence of the abortion cancer link?
Why do the billion dollar Cancer organizations and societies supposedly devoted to stopping cancer not only  remain silent, but actively deny the abortion cancer link?
Why are we fed euphemistic language to encourage support of abortion?
Why do the politically-funded national medical organizations refuse to link abortion with cancer, and refuse to acknowledge the negative reprecussions of abortion, instead advocating abortion as "reproductive health"?
Why does the establishment and culture promote abortion and associate it so strongly with civil rights, with women's rights, with freedom and liberty?
Why is it that anyone who is pro-life, or anti-abortion is immediately designated misoginistic? Anti-women's rights?
Why do the abortion elites proliferate abortion clinics in low-income and minority neighborhoods?  Why are abortion patients disproportinately poor? Why do we celebrate the eugenicist, Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood and why do we obscure her outspoken support for eugenics?
Why is Margaret Sanger a hero?
Why do we empower women to avoid having babies?
Why do we embrace the disregarding of human life?

The answers to these questions and many more require one to open his or her eyes and see the "profit before people" "efficiency-before-people" "power before people" wealth plundering dehumanizing establishment for what it is.  Because the more abortion is embedded into the laws and practices of society, the more insensitive and dehumanized we become because we have sanctioned the right to dispose of the life of the weakest and most defenseless members.

“If we say that a mother can kill her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill each other?" -- Mother Teresa

The Business of Abortion "Blood Money"



Links:

Tax Forms Show Buffett, Wealthy Elite Fund Planned Parenthood/World Abortion Empire with hundreds of millions of dollars

Abortion Facts

The State of Abortin in the United States January 2018

National Right to Life
Baby Killing Tourism and the Death of a Culture

The Ripple Effect of Abortion

Studies that Confirm the Abortion-Breast Cancer Link

Informed Concent or Institutionalized Eugenics? How the Medical Profession Encourages Abortion or Fetuses with Down Syndrome.


Planned Parenthood Founder Margaret Sanger Spoke to the Ku Klux Klan and Supported Eugenics. So Why Does the Organization Still Honor Her?Margaret Sanger: More Eugenic Than Fellow Eugenicists

Cruelly Crushed by Abortion

Breast Cancer and the Politics of Abortion in the United States

Abortion - A Liberal Cause?

Researchers Uncover Hidden Risk Factor For Breast Cancer

The Breast Cancer Epidemic: Modeling and Forecasts Based on Abortion and Other Risk Factors

The Overpopulation Myth and the New MoralityThe Overpopulation Myth

Do laws work to stop abortion?Canada Silent No More

Abortion: Issues and Controversies

Live Action
Abortion

HUSH

Former Satanic ‘high wizard’: We must fight abortion with spiritual weapons

Former Satanist: ‘I performed satanic rituals inside abortion clinics’

Read more...

Dollars for Docs

Pharmaceutical and medical device companies are now required by law to release details of their payments to a variety of doctors and U.S. teaching hospitals for promotional talks, research and consulting, among other categories. Use this tool [link below] to search for general payments (excluding research and ownership interests) made from August 2013 to December 2015.


The following link includes payments from 2013 to 2015

Dollars for Docs

The following link includes payments made through 2016:

Open Payments Data

Other Links:

About the Dollars for Docs Data

“ProPublica’s Dollars for Docs database contains payments to doctors and teaching hospitals from pharmaceutical and medical device companies made between August 2013 and December 2015. The disclosures were required under the Physician Payments Sunshine Act, a part of the 2010 Affordable Care Act.

The database includes “general payments” — 15 categories including promotional speaking, consulting, meals, travel and royalties. It does not include research payments nor does it include physicians’ ownership stakes in companies. Research payments will be included in Dollars for Docs in the future. Detailed descriptions of the payments can be found here.

The doctors included in our tool include medical doctors (MD), dentists, osteopaths (DO), optometrists, podiatrists and chiropractors. The tool does not include nurse practitioners and physician assistants (because companies are not required to report payments to them.) The tool also allows you to search teaching hospitals.

We’ve taken the payment reports, which were released by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and compiled them into a single, comprehensive database that allows patients to search for their physician and receive a listing of all payments matching that name. We provide rankings for each doctor to allow comparisons to peers in the same specialty and state.

Our analysis found that most doctors take payments, and that doctors who receive payments are, on average, more likely to prescribe a higher percentage of brand-name drugs. For each physician in Dollars for Docs, we document the number of payments he or she received, the total of those payments, and the number of different companies that paid him or her.

The bulk of each physician’s page is taken up by information on each payment he or she received, the company making the payment, the date of the payment, the names of the drugs and medical devices associated with the payment, and whether the payment was made to a third party entity. Sometimes, payments are not made directly to doctors but instead are provided to their universities, medical practices or research centers. We also note whether a doctor has disputed the payment.

By default, a physician’s page shows aggregate amounts received by year and details of payments in the most recent year reported. Users can display other years by using the dropdown at the top of each doctor page. Company and product pages display aggregate totals across all payment years (2013 to 2015).

Sometimes, more than one company makes payments related to a single drug or device. On each product page, we note the number of companies making payments, as well as the names of those companies. Each payment can also be attributed to more than one product, so we note the percentage of payments that relate only to that product (meaning no other products were mentioned in the payment).
Use the Data

Get the data that powers this investigation. A digital download is available for purchase in the Data Store.

ProPublica has published Dollars for Docs since 2010, at first using payment reports that certain companies were required to publish as part of legal settlements with the federal government. Often, these settlements were related to whistleblower lawsuits alleging improper marketing or kickbacks by the company. The now-archived version of our database includes $4 billion in payments from 17 companies, from 2009 to 2013. An archive of those payments is still available at projects.propublica.org/d4d-archive.

We have made some effort to normalize the data and eliminate duplicates, but data is primarily as it has been reported by the companies to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

About Open Payments

“Open Payments is a national transparency program that collects and publishes information about financial relationships between the health care industry (i.e. drug and device companies) and providers (i.e. physicians and teaching hospitals). These relationships may involve payments to providers for things such as research, meals, travel, gifts, or speaking fees. One of the ways that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) provides data to the public is through this search tool, which allows the public to search for physicians and teaching hospitals receiving payments, as well as companies that have made payments.

The purpose of the program is to provide the public with a more transparent healthcare system. All information available on the Open Payments database is open to personal interpretation and if there are questions about the data, healthcare consumers should speak directly to the healthcare provider for a better understanding. More information about the program can be found on the CMS Open Payments website.

There you can get an overview of the data that is collected and displayed and learn more about what is included in the data. For other Open Payments related questions, contact the Open Payments team at openpayments@cms.hhs.gov.

Read more...

War on Health: Profits Before Patient Safety

Keep in mind, according to CDC statistics, no one has died from the use of food or dietary supplements, yet now, thanks to the FDA, you’ve got 3x as much regulation for food and dietary supplements as you have for pharmaceutical drugs, despite the fact that pharmaceutical drugs have proved to be one of the top killers of American citizens.

The relationship between physicians and the drug industry doesn’t begin once you have your MD or once you own your private practice; it begins the day you hit medical school. Big Pharma often give medical students gifts on their very first day. These gifts are always “Big Pharma” propaganda disguised as education, or something medical industry related that leaves the hard pressed medical student feeling like, at least someone cares, because we all know how tough medical school is.

But why is it so tough? Why are there intern boot camps?  Why must medical students and residents go through Why is "the private group that oversees physician training in the United States proposed rolling back rules so that young doctors just out of medical school can work shifts as long as 28 hours"? I mean, who wants an exhausted medical student/intern/resident practicing their craft on you when you are at your most vulnerable? Well one answer is that "medical school functions as a highly efficient system of inDOCtrination to ensure that physicians are less likely to question or confront the systems of power."

“Professors who have already been indoctrinated to think a particular way ensure discussions are kept "on topic," or within the traditional bounds of acceptable debate that do not challenge power. I personally have lost track of the number of times I have heard a professor say, "That is interesting, but it is just outside of the scope of the discussion we are trying to have." This is a highly efficient and subtle way of controlling thought.

It makes more sense when you consider modern medicine was founded by a robber barons and an oil tycoon in particular, John D. Rockefeller. The conspiracy to limit and eliminate competition from non-drug therapies began with the Abraham Flexner Rockefeller Report on Medical Education of 1910. Abraham Flexner was engaged by John D. Rockefeller to  “evaluate” the effectiveness of therapies taught in medical schools and other institutions of the healing arts. The Flexner report unequivocally recommended the closure of all the homeopathic and naturopathic medical schools, in other words, anyone or any institution who use natural medicines to heal.

Subsequently, federal alphabet agencies--FDA, CDC, etc.-- were created to enforce the allopathic model under the guise of "protecting" the American food and drug supply.   In actuality, these agencies serve the medical industrial complex, not American citizens as you will see in the following documentaries.  The reason is obvious: alternative, mostly inexpensive non-toxic therapies represent a potential loss of billions, if not trillions of dollars to allopathic (drug) medicine and drug companies, not to mention, there is nothing more threatening to elite power than a healthy, robust public.







Links:

Overdosed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine by John Abramson, M.D.

AIDS, Opium, Diamonds, and Empire: The Deadly Virus of International Greed. by Nancy Turner Banks, M.D.

Treaties and International Agreements

Read more...

Organ Harvesting: Dissected Alive for Profit?

Most of us sign up to become organ donors, literally, out of the goodness of our hearts, but I've always been a little skeptical (fear of my death being hastened by an eagerness to procure my organs) even before I knew the truth: that our vital organs, in order to be viable for transplant, must be harvested from human beings with a pulse, in other words, alive.

You say, how can that be? What part of after-I'm-dead don't they understand?  Well, you must ask yourself: "What is the legal definition of death?" "What was the legal definition of death?" "Why did the legal definition of death change?" "If a determination of death must be made in accordance with "accepted medical standards", how are "accepted medical standards" created and what are they based on?" "What happened to the great principle, both medical and moral, that governs the medical profession: Primum, non nocere (First, do no harm)?"

In a nutshell, in order for organ transplantation to occur, the need for "dead patients with live organs" became paramount.Below, is an attempt to answer some of those questions, while exposing the truth about organ donation; however, I implore you to do your own research.

The common law standard of death used to be total cessation of cardiac and respiratory function; that is, observable signs that life has ended.  Unfortunately, that  clear definition of death renders organ transplantation, impossible. Yet, human organ transplantation is a multi-billion dollar industry. What gives?  What gives is the legal definition of death. The medical industrial complex, specifically the 1968 Ad Hoc Harvard Committee on Irreversible Coma, created in response to the development of organ transplantation redefined the end of life in such a way that made the transplantation of organs possible.  So, the legal definition of death became subjective, a matter of opinion.

From the book, Death Investigation in America: Coroners, Medical Examiners, and the Pursuit of Medical Certainty By Jeffrey M Jentzen

“The proponents of organ donation--transplant surgeons and bioethicists--represented two powerful new specialties. A decades long conflict began between these specialists and medical examiners, coroners, and prosecutors over the major basis of the latter's professional status--the possession of the body. Now, a lucrative business of organ procurement and a sentimental public relations campaign pressing for organ transplantation began to criticize medical examiners. Created in part in response to the development of organ transplantation, the 1968 Ad Hoc Harvard Committee on Irreversible Coma established that an individual could be legally pronounced dead by the physician based on the constellation of clinical findings that did not include the heart ceasing to beat.  Against aggressive organ procurement agencies, for profit, tissue recovery teams, and transplant surgeons entered the fight for desperate patients in a battle over possession of the body. Coe and his colleagues faced new challenges in having to wrestle with the sometimes conflicting goals of their obligation to investigate death and their responsibility to supply the public's increasing demand for organs and tissues to support life.

The definition of what constituted death changed from the absence of observable sign of breathing, movement and heartbeat to more subtle definitions based on lack of blood flow to the brain."

Now that the legal determination of death, since the advent of "cadaver" organ transplantation, has eliminated the total cessation of cardiac and respiratory function, death is now defined as the cessation of brain function--brain death--but, what is brain death? How can you be completely dead if your heart is still pumping, if your lungs are still working? Keep in mind, ventilators do not breathe for the patient, they only force air into the lungs; the patient must breathe out on his or her own.  And the diagnosis of Persistent Vegetative State (PVS) is incorrect almost half the time.  In other words, there is no true standard, and the diagnosis of brain death is completely subjective, a matter of opinion based on hospital  policy that is often influenced by profit margin.

But how do they determine "brain death"? Well, there is no legal or even statewide standard State law varies greatly and hospitals dictate what tests (if any) are used for the diagnosis. Many states allow nurses or nurse practitioners to declare brain death. However, there is one test that stands out above the rest and that is the Apnea Test.

Doctors and hospitals proclaim that an Apnea test can be used to confirm brain death. It does no such thing. In fact, it only makes things worse for the patient, your loved one. During the Apnea test, they take the ventilator away for up to ten minutes, at a time when the patient needs oxygen the most, to see how the patient responds. Without that crucial oxygen, the carbon dioxide level goes up which makes the brain swell, making it much more likely the patient will experience true brain death. Once again, keep in mind that a ventilator will not work on a dead person. The only thing a ventilator does is push air in. It does not push air out. Despite what they tell you, the ventilator only works when the lungs, heart, kidneys, liver are functioning. In other words, the patient is not dead!

Now, if you choose to opt out, it's not simply a matter of unchecking the little box on your driver's license or informing family members that should something happen to you, you do not want to donate your organs. Thanks to the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act, adopted in 48 states, you must have a document of refusal to opt out.

“donor cards are legally binding in 48 states and health professionals who act on them are immune from liability in every state."

“The revised UAGA (2006) reaffirms that if a donor has a document of gift, there is no reason to seek consent from the donor family as they have no right to give it legally.  If an individual has not made a document of gift during life, the Revised UAGA (2006) presumes the intent to donate organs, therefore has expanded the list of person (in section 9a  who can consent on behalf of the individual...Finally, if an individual prefers not to donate, this must be documented in a signed, explicit refusal."

It's a good idea to do your homework and research the evolution of major laws that make organ transplantation possible. The major ones are Uniform Determination of Death Act (UDDA) created in 1981, and the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act (UAGA), not to mention the Dead Donor Rule, which isn't exactly a law, but a general ethical assumption, enshrined in the UDDA.

The 1998 DHHS Referral and Request Regulation.

“In light of the current problems regarding the lack of supply of suitable cadaveric organs, on December 15, 1997, Vice President Al Gore along with the DHHS launched a national initiatives to increase organ donation by 20%.

One element of the national initiative was to propose a rule ensuring that next-of-kin are asked to consent to the procurement of their loved ones organs. As a result, the DHHS passed a Referral and Request Regulation in August of 1998. 

The new regulation provides that hospitals wishing to receive Medicare payments must refer their patients who died along with their patient whose deaths are imminent to a local Organ Procurement Organization (OPO). Consequently, the OPO would provide personnel trained and experienced in obtaining consent to consult with the patient's next of kin and request consent to procure their loved ones organs.

At the same time that an increasing amount of research is finding the brain can heal itself, the use of aggressive tactics by organ procurement teams towards families to accept a diagnosis of "brain death" is increasing.  The result is that the diagnosis of "brain death" has been rapidly increasing over the past several years.  There is no doubt that lucrative financial outcomes factor in when determining brain death. 

To put it simply, the organ donor card gives doctors your permission (under contract law) to remove your organs from your warm, breathing and UN-anesthetized, doctor-declared “brain-dead” body. Keep in mind that young people with healthy organs  are the best candidates for organ harvesting.

As, Dr. Robert Truog, Professor of Medical Ethics, Anesthesiology and Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School asked,

“Is our understanding of the facts driving our conclusion or is our desire for certain conclusions driving our interpretation of the facts? Are we gerrymandering the lines between life and death solely to meet social goals? In the long run, is this more likely to bolster or erode the confidence and trust of the people in the organ donation enterprise? "

P.S. I'm only advocating for fully informed organ donors--informed consent--not the end of organ transplantation. I'm only trying to encourage due diligence and the education of oneself and others on the organ donation program. The bottom line is: Challenge the "brain death" diagnosis. Don't sign off on the hospital's advanced directives.   And above all, do not consent to an Apnea test for loved ones!

Think about it, why do they administer paralyzing drugs and sometimes even anti anxiety drugs--however, no anesthesia-- to the organ donor while operating on them?  Because they're not brain dead! Or any kind of dead!    I woke up in the middle of an operation...all I can tell you is that I've never experienced so much pain.  Thank God I could move and scream to alert the doctors.  My worst nightmare is being operated on, feeling every little move of the surgeon, without the ability to move, scream, alert anyone that I'm being tortured. I imagine I'm not the only one.










Links:

Controversies in the Determination of Death: A White Paper by the President's Council on Bioethics

How to revoke organ donation consent by state.

Horror as patient wakes up in NY hospital with doctors trying to harvest her organs for transplant profits

An 8-year-old was taken off life support, his organs donated. Now, police are investigating

Full Court Document filed regarding lawsuit regarding coroner's office and 8-year old taken off life support to get his organs

Surgeon Accused of Speeding a Death to Get Organs

Ruben Navarro Civil Case Filing:

Doctor Cleared of Harming Man to Obtain Organs

Can Brain Dead Patients Respond?

"Brain Dead" Patient Begins Breathing During Surgery After Liver Removed and Other Horrific Accounts:

“There's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Now, mostly dead … is slightly alive."

Read more...

Second Opinion from Doctor Results in Different Diagnosis 88% of Time

Science Daily clearly takes point of view of the Medical Industrial Complex (MIC)--profit before patients--that the value of second opinions are demonstrated in a study, whereas I see this from the highly skeptical-of-the-deeply-rooted-MIC point of view that it can't be trusted 88% of the time. We don't know whether the first or second opinion is right or wrong. What about a third opinion? Would that opinion disagree with the first and the second?

“Many patients come to Mayo Clinic for a second opinion or diagnosis confirmation before treatment for a complex condition. In a new study, Mayo Clinic reports that as many as 88 percent of those patients go home with a new or refined diagnosis — changing their care plan and potentially their lives. Conversely, only 12 percent receive confirmation that the original diagnosis was complete and correct.

We take it for granted that the Mayo Clinic is right because, well, they're the Mayo Clinic, the poster child for the MIC, this vast networked system that we've been indoctrinated to believe in since birth.
It's not that the MIC is all bad, or hasn't saved many lives and improved the quality of many others.  It's the fact that the opposite is also true, it has destroyed and ruined lives, possibly in equal measure   and we're made to believe there are no other viable options. 

“We are not saying that there are no useful or helpful things within the MIC. It has saved many of our lives or the lives of people we love. We are not anti healthcare or science, but are rather exposing the reality that many of us are dependent on the MIC while we are simultaneously trying to change it and ultimately build alternatives to it. Many of us don’t want to have to turn to the MIC, yet have few other viable options. And still many of us are fighting for access to current (or better) services within the MIC. There are no easy answers and the contradictions we are living in are often painful and unjust. Similar to our work to resist and challenge capitalism or to create alternatives to the police and prisons, resisting and challenging the MIC is rife with complexity and there is so much we need that we don’t have yet.

We are asking, why we have so few options when it comes to our healthcare needs? And why insurance and pharmaceutical companies get to call the shots on the kind of care we receive—or don’t? Why don’t we talk more about the ways that forced medicalization has become part of our prison system? Or how non-western and alternative healing practices are often no less ableist than western medical practices? We are asking, what could “health,” “wellness,” “care,” “accessibility” and “sustainability” look like in practice, outside of theory? We are revealing where and how the MIC is already in our lives in ways we might not have thought of before. We are urging us all to connect the MIC to our political work, because healing, wellness, care, “health” and disability are part of whatever liberatory work we are engaged in.

Links:

Medical Industrial Complex Visual

“The Medical Industrial Complex is an enormous system with tentacles that reach beyond simply doctors, nurses, clinics, and hospitals. It is a system about profit, first and foremost, rather than “health,” well being and care. Its roots run deep and its history and present are connected to everything including eugenics, capitalism, colonization, slavery, immigration, war, prisons, and reproductive oppression. It is not just a major piece of the history of ableism, but all systems of oppression.

Read more...