DO NOT sign the organ donor card

[Teal Lantern]

Uber shooting victim, 14, was declared dead and having her body prepared for organ donation when she squeezed her mother's hand

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... l-bed.html

The youngster, identified only as A.K in court documents, was hit by a bullet in a car at the Cracker Barrel parking lot
Four other women inside the car were all killed during the shooting spree
When the teenager arrived at Bronson Hospital, staff said she was dead
Police even announced that she was the seventh victim of the shooting
As doctors prepared her body for transplant, her mother stood at her side
Her daughter then squeezed her hand while she was on life support
She was taken in for surgery and is still fighting for her life

As a comedian once put it, they're not trying to save you, they're looking you over for parts.
Organ transplantation is a HUGE business. No telling how many people have been vivisected, when they could have survived, because no one was standing right there holding their hand.

[HouseMD]

I've been there for quite a few brain death determinations, it's more of a process than you realize and they had not yet actually performed the testing. Here's a layman's explanation, but basically we can't take organs until a person passes a series of tests that they hadn't even started on her: http://m.livescience.com/53821-what-is- ... oting.html

Depending on how stable she was, she would have to have had three tests performed: a cold caloric that showed no eye response (along with a few other reflex tests of the eyes), a 24-hour EEG, and an apnea test. They had done none of those, they had merely obtained the mother's consent that if all tests came back with a confirmation of brain death, she would be okay with organ donation. This is largely the fault of the media for poor reporting, as they have little idea of the manner in which the donation process works. As to contacting early, that's standard for any major trauma- because the timeline for brain death from trauma can be extremely fast and subsequent organ damage can result from physiological processes failing, it is standard operating procedure to call the local organ donation service for any patient that might due within 24 hours because if they deteriorate rapidly, the organs are lost as well as the person's life.

Basically, the mother took this early request of consent as a sign things were all said and done, but that isn't how things work- consent is obtained, then tests are performed simultaneous to treatments being performed, then if the patient either improves or is not found to be braindead, organs are not recovered. That is the outcome of >95% of cases, people get better our they aren't braided, so they get treatment and go home. The early intervention is so those 5% that are fully braindead or do end up dying don't have their organs rot in the ground because no one asked early enough. The media painting something that is the normal outcome for such situations as a miracle is ridiculous- this kid was able to squeeze a hand, and thus would have failed ALL brain death testing, and was stable enough to survive their injuries, so wouldn't have qualified for donation after death. You don't get "vivisected"- if you have even the tiniest reflex left, your organs can't be harvested unless your heart has stopped (say, someone who dies on-scene in a motor vehicle accident). That just isn't how it works.

[Moretorque]

It's those dam pesky internet trolls!

[Teal Lantern]

Thanks for the link, Doc. Interesting info.
In my area, years ago, we had a few popular doctors taken down for running "pill mills". All fun and games until some derp o.d'ed on a 'script.
For that and other reasons my antennae have been a bit twitchy about big chunks of the health care industry.

[HouseMD]

Thanks for the link, Doc. Interesting info.
In my area, years ago, we had a few popular doctors taken down for running "pill mills". All fun and games until some derp o.d'ed on a 'script.
For that and other reasons my antennae have been a bit twitchy about big chunks of the health care industry.

And that's fair enough- there's plenty of bad individual docs running about out there, both of the traditional and alternative med variety. Poor prescribing and pill mills have created the opioid epidemic, for instance. Then there's rehab clinics that cost literally thousands per month to get you off of opioid afterward- heard about one guy that was charging $500/week PER PATIENT to treat opioid addicts with methadone or suboxone- that's just ****ing untenable. But most doctors are just kind of in the middle of everything, trying to do the best with the guidelines and research we've got. A lot of the time, that research is incomplete, because that's just how science works, our the guidelines change because we find an even better way to do things. We're kind of in the infancy of medicine still- evidence-based medicine has only been around for just over 100 years, and we didn't even get antibiotics until the second world war- do things aren't quite perfect yet.

But there's some systems that are very difficult to corrupt, organ donation bring one of them. The reason for that is the nature of the process, and how many people are involved. You need several nurses, respiratory therapists, neurologists, intensive care physicians, and surgeons along the way to make the process happen, and only after all of these people (all of whom stand nothing to gain from the process) are 100% sure this person is braindead (even if one person objects, the process is halted), no organ recovery occurs. And you don't need to just be severely brain damaged- you need to be full-on no brainstem activity brain-****ing dead.

Now how hard life is for the organ recipients, that's a story for another day. You may get a few more years, and that's a wonderful gift, but you're basically living life in a similar state to an AIDS patient the whole time, and those organs need to be swapped out every 5-10 years, on average. Hopefully we can finally get the whole lab-grown organ thing figured out in the near future so this whole thing isn't needed anymore and people needing new organs can have a decent quality of life.