Harvesting Organs Before Death.

I don't think it gets any creepier than this: ripping out body parts before the patient dies.

That's right. The New York Organ Donor Network is accused of pressuring doctors to declare patients dead before they die in order to harvest their organs.

"New York hospitals are routinely "harvesting" body parts from patients before they're even dead, a lawsuit is claiming.

The suit claims that transplant non-profit, The New York Organ Donor Network, of bullying hospital staffers to declare patients brain dead when they are still alive so to take their organs. New York hospitals are routinely "harvesting" body parts from patients before they're even dead, a lawsuit is claiming. The suit claims that transplant non-profit, The New York Organ Donor Network, of bullying hospital staffers to declare patients brain dead when they are still alive so to take their organs. The suit accuses the transplant non-profit, The New York Organ Donor Network, of bullying hospital staffers to declare patients brain dead when they are still alive in order to take their organs.

Plaintiff Patrick McMahon, 50, an Air Force combat veteran, is a former transplant coordinator who claims he was fired just four months into the job for protesting about the practice and estimates that one in five patients is still showing signs of brain activity when surgeons declare them dead and start ripping out their body parts.

"They're playing God," McMahon told New York Post. The lawsuits, filed in Manhattan Supreme Court Tuesday, cited four examples of improper organ harvesting.

One of the examples cited details of a 19-year-old man injured in a car crash who was still struggling to breath and showed signs of brain activity when doctors at Nassau University Medical Center declared him brain dead under pressure from the donor-network officials, including Director Michael Goldstein, who allegedly said during a conference call: "This kid is dead, you got that?" the suit claims.

McMahon said that the teenager could have easily recovered.

"I have been in Desert Storm, Iraq and Afghanistan in combat," he told New York Post. "I worked on massive brain injuries, trauma, gunshot wounds, IEDs. I have seen worse cases than this and the victims recover."

The three other examples of patients who were still clinging to life when doctors declared them brain dead included a female patient admitted to St. Barnabas Hospital, a man admitted to Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn and a woman admitted to Staten Island University Hospital after a drug overdose who was given "a paralyzing anesthetic" because her body was still jerking, according to the Post.

McMahon said when he flagged up the injection, another network employee told hospital personnel McMahon was "an untrained troublemaker with a history of raising frivolous issues and questions," the suit charged. "I had a reputation for raising a red flag," he said.

McMahon accuses the federally-funded network of having a "quota" system and hiring "coaches" to teach staff how to be more persuasive in getting family members to give consent to organ donation. McMahon claims that on November 4, he told the network's CEO and president, Helen Irving, that "one in five patients declared brain dead show signs of brain activity at the time the Note is issued."

However, according to the suit, Irving replied: "This is how things are done.

There’s a lot of money at stake here.  To be sure, when quota systems are in place, and they are, the pressure is on medical professionals to either look the other way, or declare death prematurely.  

Links:

Parents' Hospital Lawsuit Says Teen Was 'Killed' For Organs

Read more...

In China, Selling Your Organs for Cash or an Ipad 2 is a Mouse Click Away

The illegal organ trade is widespread in China. It's made easier by a lack of proper regulations and hospital loopholes.

1.5 million Chinese require organ transplants, however, only 10,000 receive them each year. 65% of the organs come from executed prisoners. But new government regulations have reduced the number of organs available for transplant, and few Chinese agree to donate their organs upon death, widening the gap between supply and demand.

A 17-year-old student in Anhui Province sold one of his kidneys for 20,000 yuan only to buy an iPad 2. Now, with his health getting worse, the boy is feeling regret but it is too late, the Global Times reported today.

"I wanted to buy an iPad 2 but could not afford it," said the boy surnamed Zheng in Huaishan City. "A broker contacted me on the Internet and said he could help me sell one kidney for 20,000 yuan."

On April 28 Zheng went to Chenzhou City in neighboring Hunan Province for the kidney removal surgery arranged by the broker. His parents knew nothing about it, Zheng said. He was paid 22,000 yuan after his right kidney was taken out at the Chenzhou No. 198 Hospital.

When he returned home, his mother found out and reported to the police immediately. But they could not locate the broker whose cell phone was always powered off, the report said.

It turned out that the Chenzhou No. 198 Hospital was not qualified to perform organ transplant. The hospital claimed they had no idea about Zheng's surgery because the department that did the surgery had been contracted to a Fujian businessman.

The case is still under investigation, the report said.

Links:

The Red Market On the Trail of the World's Organ Brokers, Bone Thieves, Blood Farmers, and Child Traffickers

Regarding other black markets, the author of the book, Scott Carney, said:

I actually don't go into Kosovo at all in the book. It's a shame because what happened there during the war is horrible. In fact, I found during my research that there were far too many ways that the body is sold illegally for me to ever possibly cover. There are huge gaps where I don't explore organ rings in south america, the bone thefts of Biological Tissue Services in New Jersey, the NY Rabbi caught in a kidney ring, plastinated cadavers in South Shore Seaport. The list is extensive. Instead I have tried my best to look at ten or twelve distinct markets and look a similarities that might provide a lens to examine all red markets.

Read more...

Removing Organs Before the Patient is Dead?

Call me stingy, but I know I want to be dead as a doornail before they remove anything from me. I don't want doctors with scalpels in hand, hovering over my not-quite-dead-yet body anxiously waiting for the first sign of lifelessness to slice and dice me, only to prove how wonderful they are by saving someone else's life.

Some doctors and bioethicists, however, say the practice raises the disturbing specter of transplant surgeons preying on dying patients for their organs, possibly pressuring doctors and families to discontinue treatment, adversely affecting donors' care in their final days and even hastening their deaths.

Read more...