Archives For Organ donation

Definition of Irreversible Coma

Brain Death=Medical Fiction

March 21, 2019 — Leave a comment

Life Site News Article

Definition of Irreversible Coma
A Definition of Irreversible Coma

LifeSite News Article

Is it morally permissible to harvest the organs of a person in a coma declared “brain dead” by doctors? 

Why and when did organ transplantation first come about?

And what is the Church’s teaching on using organs from a person deemed to be “brain dead”?

Doyen Nguyen, M.D., S.T.L., is a physician specialized in hematopathology and a moral theologian. She is currently pursuing her doctorate in theology at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum) in Rome. Her research is quite extensive and it is featured on https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5102188/

Doyen Nguyen during an in-depth interview with the Italian magazine Radici Cristiane (Link), where she blames a “consumerist culture” for causing many to accept the idea of “brain death,” a term she refers to as an incoherent, “medical fiction.”

Nguyen refutes the invention of the term “brain death” to describe someone in an “irreversible coma” by arguing that the term “irreversible coma” itself “indicates that the patient is alive, for the simple reason that only a living person can become comatose or remain comatose. In other words, it would be an oxymoron to say that a corpse is in coma!”

When a doctor declares a comatose patient to be dead, that patient does not thereby become dead, she said. 

Well worth the time to read the entire article on LifeSite News.

Surprising Realty of Brain Death

This is a short video that speaks of one families hospital reality which is similar to what we experienced with my son, Jamie. Different outcome, their mom survived, but wow it is as if it is a movie script, that these OPO’s (Organ Procurement Organizations) are taught.

Surprising Realities of Brain Death

A couple of other things stood out to me in the article:

  1. The opening statement in the Harvard report which states: “Our primary purpose is to define irreversible coma as a new criterion for death.” Note however, the term “irreversible coma” itself indicates that the patient is alive, for the simple reason that only a living person can become comatose or remain comatose. In other words, it would be an oxymoron to say that a corpse is in coma!
  2. A nurse’s comment: What much of the public does not understand is that when they go into “harvest” those organs from a loved one, it will not be done after the person has physically died, (respirations and heart rate have both ceased, etc) or at a time when that person would no longer be capable of physically feeling that pain, but will be done when their body is still physically very much alive and they still will have the capacity to feel painful stimuli. The surgeons want “viable organs” and that means taking them when the host is still physically alive and tissue death has not yet set in or begun to happen. The thought of a loved one lying on that operating table, not able to speak, but very much feeling terrible pain as they are being dissected or cut into and their organs removed for harvesting is too terrible to even contemplate and I do not think that I would ever consent to such a thing for a loved one.

“Brain Death” is under scrutiny as more and more doctors understand that the public is becoming aware of the ethical, legal and medical controversies surrounding “brain death” and questions are being asked.

I haven’t given up on exposing the horrible diagnosis of “brain death” or my son’s story of what we went through.

In Brain death, Brain Death, Organ donation
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Dead Enough? Organ Donation

November 21, 2018 — Leave a comment

Dead Enough? Organ Donation

Please don’t think I have forgotten about the horror of harvesting organs.

I came across this article and post from The Fifth Estate filmed about Canada but it is EXACTLY the same in the United States. In fact the United States was/is the leader and sets the standard for all other countries. In fact is was at Cleveland Clinic that first started using the Donation After Cardiac Death or DCD. 

Across the country, physicians involved in organ donation must adhere to what’s known as the ‘dead donor rule’. It seems simple – organs cannot be procured until after the donor has died.

EPISODE SYNOPSIS : It’s a question you might think medical science would have answered long ago – when are you dead? But in “Dead Enough” the fifth estate explores how the standards for when and how people are declared dead can vary from province to province and even from hospital to hospital. Host Bob McKeown looks at how, in the rush to meet the need for life-saving organ transplants, some doctors are worried that we may be pushing the ethical boundaries.

In the documentary Dead Enough, The Fifth Estate shares the stories of two families who both faced difficult decisions about organ donation, because their loved ones were not expected to survive severe brain injuries.

Sharon Thompson Daughter

When her daughter was critically injured and paralyzed in a car crash, for example, Sharon Thompson was at her bedside in a Calgary hospital around the clock.

Thompson says she was approached to consent to organ donation, and asked to consider taking her daughter off life support.

“When people are in an emotional state, I don’t think that’s the time to be asking those questions. Because the emotional roller-coaster we were on for, I would say, at least three of those six weeks … that’s not a great time to be having to make that decision too, because you’re not thinking,” she told McKeown.

Thompson chose not to take her daughter off life support, and Brandice Thompson made a remarkable recovery.

Shane Becker

Shane Becker, in Vancouver, BC.

His family was planning to donate his organs after the 25-year-old college student suffered a fall that severely injured his brain.

When his mother arrived at the Vancouver General Hospital, she said she was told that her son’s brain would soon stop functioning, and he would not recover.

As she was struggling with the news, she was approached by a hospital social worker. Donna Becker said she was asked to sign the organ donation certificate.

“I just made a decision to do so knowing Shane would’ve wanted me to,” she told McKeown.

But the decision to take Becker off life support had to be postponed. The family wanted to WAIT for his father, who had to drive from the BC interior to say his final goodbye.

While they were WAITING, Becker’s mother, a nurse, noticed a tiny change in her son.

“When we were all holding his hand, he did, there was definitely some change in his grasp. It became a little stronger, especially when we spoke to him,” she told McKeown. Because they were waiting Shane Becker is now 32, married and a father.

The debate over defining death has mostly been conducted in the medical community, out of public view. It is time to make the debate public. Excuse my sarcasm but good luck with that. Organ donation is a multi billion dollar industry.

 

Please take a few minutes and watch this video produced by CBC/Radio-Canada. Listen to both sides of the debate. You may have to decide for one of your loved ones. Informed consent is critical to making the best decision for your loved one.

Informed consent is given when the consented has an adequate understanding of the relevant facts, and voluntarily, without coercion, consents to some procedure.

 

“The motives are good, the means that are questionable or morally objectionable,” according to Mary Ellen Waithe, professor at Cleveland State University featured in the video at the 20 min mark. I beg you to watch at least 10 minutes of this to see what she discovered. Scary stuff, which will now cause me once again to dig out Jamie’s medical records and see if he was given Heparin. (encourages the brain bleed) Listen to the transcript that she discovered between transplant surgeons at Cleveland Clinic. Crazy…

I completely lost it when I listened to Shane’s own words, saying he was floating above his bed, saw his family weeping and crying and saying, “guy’s I’m here, I’m trying, I’m fighting, I just can’t communicate with you.”He stated he was there cognitively, I was frustrated I couldn’t communicate with them. ”

Jamie in the hospital

Shane, young, smart, strong athletic prime candidate for organ donation. Fighting to communicate with his family. Can you imagine what would have happened IF his dad had not been out-of-town and was traveling to get there to say his good-byes?

  Oh God, my son Jamie let us know is so many ways he was fighting. 

And this is why I write and share because I don’t want anyone to not understand about brain death.

Jamie Caulk 

In Brain Death, Organ donation
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Taquisha McKitty

October 6, 2017 — Leave a comment

Taquisha McKitty

Taquisha McKittyTaquisha McKitty was admitted into the Brampton Civic Hospital, Ontario, Canada on September 14, 2017 having suffered a drug overdose.  While although Taquisha was breathing on her own and moving in response to her family, Taquisha was recognized as a registered organ donor and medical treatment to protect and preserve her life were circumvented.  

Two apnea tests were performed, she was declared “brain dead” by two physicians in accordance to Ontario law and to this effect, a death certificate was issued September 20, 2017.  Her family hopes to have Taquisha’s death certificate canceled in pursuit of medical therapy her wellbeing, to protect and preserve her life, not that of another(s) as an organ donor.

A Brampton judge issued a two-week injunction to keep a woman declared brain dead on September 20 on life support.

Ontario Superior Court Justice Lucille Shaw ruled that Dr. Andrew Baker, chief of critical care at St. Michael’s Hospital would run further tests.

“If you are there with her and you touch her and you grab her feet, she will pull her feet from you. If you tickle her she will move her feet. In one instance one of her cousins was squeezing her hand and asked her to show her thumb and she moved her thumb,” McKitty’s father Stanley Stewart told CP24 on Thursday night. “We know for a fact that she is alive because if she was dead and her brain was dead there is no way that a week-and-a-half later she would still be moving. If you are brain dead then no parts should be moving.”

Dr. Paul Byrne

“What’s going on here is the young lady is living,” Dr. Paul A. Byrne, a retired neonatologist, past president of the Catholic Medical Association is retained by the family to speak on their behalf, told CP24 on Thursday.

“A declaration by a doctor does not make someone dead. There is clearly a difference between being alive and being dead and she is alive. Her heart beats, she has circulation, she moves her legs and she responds to the family.”

Byrne told CP24 that he believes doctors are rushing to declare Taquisha  McKitty brain dead so that her organs can be donated. If he is granted expert status, he will be able to advise a physician licensed in Ontario to provide McKitty with treatment.

Dr. Byrne said that all the family wants is for their loved one to be given “proper treatment.” he said it is his belief that Taquisha McKitty could still recover.

“Patients like this, if they treat them with thyroid hormones and other things, they have a chance to continue to live,” he said.

*** Please if you’re ever in this situation don’t do the Apnea test, I have written on it so much and it only makes things worse, even in the doctors call it the “gold standard.” 

Brain death is NOT true death. It is a legal term created by doctors to get your organs. When organs are removed from a “brain dead” donor, all the vital signs of the “donors” are still present prior to the harvesting of organs, such as normal body temperature and blood pressure; the heart is beating; vital organs, like the liver and kidneys, are functioning; and the donor is breathing with the help of a ventilator.

In medicine, we protect, preserve, and prolong life and postpone death. Our goal is to keep body and soul united. When a vital organ ceases to function, death can result. On the other hand, medical intervention can sometimes restore the function of the damaged organ, or medical devices (such as pacemakers and heart-lung machines) can preserve life. The observation of a cessation of functioning of the brain or some other organ of the body does not in itself indicate destruction of even that organ, much less death of the person. Dr. Paul Byrne

All of us who know the truth of the fallacy of brain death must pray and be there to help her. Watch the short video with Dr. Byrne and her dad and pastor.

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Dr. Seuss quote

Discovering Your Passion ?

May 9, 2016 — Leave a comment

What is your passion?

Passion being something that keeps you up at night, that you research and pray about and give your whole heart to.

I have discovered over the years that passion is the driving force that can change things for the better. Unfortunately many times it comes about because of suffering. In the midst of suffering, you discover something you didn’t know before.

I’ll tell you the truth you can’t be passion about a lot of things because there are only so many hours in the day.

Dr. Seuss quote When you have passion you CARE… an awful lot.

Like Dr. Suess says in one of his book quotes, “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”

Brain Death

Obviously, my writing this blog I care about the controversial definition of death. I care that people don’t understand when they go into the DMV or Secretary of State office and sign up to be an organ donor they are giving consent to something they don’t understand.

Informed consent is an ethical concept—that all patients should understand and agree to the potential consequences of their care—that has become codified in the law and in daily practice at every medical institution. Informed consent is a process for getting permission before conducting a healthcare intervention on a person. The ONLY time it doesn’t apply is if the patient does not have the mental capacity to decide.

Hence, in organ donation the patient is unconscience and can not make that decision. This is where the organ donor card comes into play. If you have signed to be an organ donor after death then that becomes a legally binding contract that is enforceable should you not be able to make that decision.

The problem is further exasperated by the fact that you were NOT told the legal definition of death. Like most reasonable people you thought dead meant dead, and who cares what happens to the body IF you are really dead. You came to believe that death meant no breath, no circulatory response.

U S Definition of Death and what they use to pronounce you dead.

“An individual who has sustained either (1) irreversible cessation of circulatory and respiratory functions, or (2) irreversible cessation of ALL functions of the ENTIRE brain, including the brain stem, is dead. A determination of death must be made in accordance with accepted medical standards.”

I will point out to you that this legal definition of death says irreversible cessation of the ENTIRE brain.  But, that rarely is the case as there is usually some parts of the brain that continues to have blood flow.

There are two other area’s that I have become passionate about 1) mandatory vaccines and 2) the corrupt foster care system in America.

I am not against all vaccines and I am not against the fact that some children need to be removed from abusive homes. What I am against 100% is the government telling us we have to vaccinate to have our children in school. I want informed consent to be presented in ANY and ALL decisions we have to make concerning our bodies.

Vaccines

I am against the government telling us we have to vaccinate to have our children in school. I am against the fact that parents are not informed on what is in the ingredients (adjuvants) in every vaccine.

I don’t blame doctors for this as they are only taught about scheduling in med school. I read a VERY disturbing report over the weekend. It is actually the minutes from an FDA meeting in 2012. I am going to link here as it is 80 pages long. The essence of the report is the discussion in using human tumor cell lines in vaccinations.

Excerpts from the 80 page FDA Meeting on Human Tumors for Vaccine Manufactures

Meeting notes of FDA“I think there’s a brave-new-world aspect to this that we have to deal with. I think we have to tell providers about it in a way that they get it. I think we have to tell the public about it in a way that they get it. But I’m convinced after hearing the data today and the discussion today that these cell lines are important in continued development of vaccines.”
“I’m not a regulator, so I will say just what I think in reaction to the comment about putting comments in a package insert about tumor cells making tumorsin which vaccines were made. I would say, from a personal opinion, that you would have tobe very careful about the degrees of separation between where the stuff comes from andwhat you are putting in the vial that the package insert is describing. It’s not at all related, in a certain sense. I’m not 100 percent convinced that whether or not a cell makes a tumor in a nude mouse has anything to do with the safety of a vaccine that ends up getting made.”
“There are concerns we have. It’s a really interesting intellectual discussion. When it gets right down to what’s in the vial and what the patient is going to ask me about, whether it’s safe, I’m not going to back and say, well, you know, HeLa cells kill nude mice.” 
Now what is interesting about the nude mice, is that they only keep them for a year. If the mouse doesn’t get the tumor in a year then the mouse is killed. Why is that? Well it costs too much to keep them so they said.
“Just one more thing to add there. There is also, especially with the nude mouse, a rate at which tumors will spontaneously form. The longer you keep the animals, the more likely you are to get results that are very difficult to interpret. Part of this is the fact that the rate of spontaneous tumor generation goes up with age. But if you were to hold the animal that long, then you would be obligated to investigate those tumors, for most of which you might not be able to come up with a clear idea of why they occurred because of that background tumor rate.”
“If they are going to get a tumor with aninoculum of a high dose of an immortalized cell, they will usually get a tumor in six months.Beyond that, they start getting skin disease. They are very expensive to maintain. They have spontaneous tumors. Lots of things happen that make it impractical.
So there’s a limit to just watching them forever, just in case you pick up that last tumor. Dr.Peden’s point about “so what”— if you get out there at a year and an animal pops up with a tumor,you probably will spend $10,000 trying to find out that it was a spontaneous tumor.”
Here is the FDA entire meeting notes. It took me a few days to read it in its entireity.
Folks, I DID NOT say all this it is in plain black and white for you to read the discussion and make up your own mind. 
I am a mom of 5 and I vaccinated all my kids from 1979 to 1990. I still have their records. The first four children had 6 before age of 5. My youngest had 8 before age 5. Now children have 36 before age 5.
When we lost my granddaughter at 13 weeks due to SIDS, I started to look into SIDS and stumbled across a vaccine connection which led me to look into other vaccines, adjuvants in them and the harm done to children.
William Wilberforce Shocking and I mean shocking. 
Isn’t it a comforting thing for all of us to know that the FDA approved the use of human cancer cells (“human tumor-derived cell lines”) in vaccine manufactures?
Why has this NOT been publicized to the public?
In fact, at the FDA hearing held at which this technology to employ “eternal life cells” in vaccine manufacture was approved, the VRBPAC Chair, Dr. Robert Daum, spent probably 30 minutes in discussions regarding how exactly to keep this fact SECRET from the American public, e.g., let’s describe these cells as “cell tissue cultures,” not as human cancer cells.
What are you passionate about? I would love for you to tell me what it is and why in your comments?
`Missy

 

In Brain Death, Organ donation, Vaccines ,
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Brain Scans Show Some Are Living on the Edge of Consciousness

April 30, 2016 — Leave a comment

Jamie CaulkThis was really hard for me to read as this is what they said about Jamie and a blood clot in the basilar artery from his auto accident. The doctors told us that the blood clot showed where the stroke occurred.

Oh, how I wish I knew what I know now about the lie of brain death. It is so hard to speak intelligently when you just don’t understand what the legal definition of death is. I guess this is why I write to give other families a chance to understand when they say your child is dead.

In an article from the May 6, 2016, Newsweek Magazine entitled, “Given the right stimuli, brain activity in patients in persistent vegetative states can bear similarity to non-injured people,” author Don Heupel highlights two separate but related issues related to serious brain injuries.

Maggie Worthen was a week away from graduating from Smith College in May 2006 when she suffered a massive stroke. Her classmates found her unconscious on the floor of her dorm room, unable to speak or move.

A CT scan revealed that the stroke in the otherwise healthy 22-year-old was brought on by a blood clot in the basilar artery, a critical blood vessel in the back of her head that supplies oxygen-rich blood to the brainstem, the part of the brain that controls the body’s basic life support system. It took 12 hours before neurosurgeons at the closest trauma center were able to remove the clot and restore blood flow to Maggie’s brain.

“They told me most people don’t survive these kinds of strokes. If she made it through the next couple days, it was almost certain she would have no meaningful recovery,” says Maggie’s mother, Nancy Worthen.

As Nancy grappled with Maggie’s prognosis, she felt pressured to make some harrowing choices. One doctor advised removing Maggie from the ventilator and letting her die. Another suggested foregoing the insertion of a feeding tube and tracheotomy that would help Maggie breathe. A representative from an organ procurement organization approached her for consent to transplant Maggie’s organs.

But Nancy resisted them all, believing in the resilience that had always defined her daughter.

MRI's and CT scans can not determine consiciousnessDr. Joseph Fins, chief of the division of medical ethics at Weill, says Maggie’s experience and that of others like her raise troubling questions about how people with serious brain injuries are diagnosed and cared for. “Patients like Maggie are routinely misdiagnosed and placed in what we euphemistically call ‘custodial care’ where they have no access to any treatments that might help them recover or give them a chance of engaging with others,” says Fins, even as research suggests that 68 percent of severely brain-injured patients who receive rehabilitation eventually regain consciousness and that 21 percent of those are able to one day live on their own. A recent post made on www.sideeffectsofxarelto.org about brain blood clots demonstrates a truly somber attitude to victims of such injuries.

Dr. Joseph Fins interviewed Maggie’s family along with over 50 other families in similar situations. Almost all their stories shared a common thread – that the injured person was immediately “written off” and families were asked to make “what he calls ‘premature’ decisions about their loved one—such as whether to withhold or withdraw care or to consent to organ donation.”

(Yes that is the choice)

Dr. Nicholas Schiff, a neurologist at Weill Cornell Medical College, says even one person wrongly diagnosed when they have intact mental life is one too many. “Imagine being conscious in a body in which you have no control. It’s difficult to imagine anything more terrifying.” He attributes misdiagnosis to a number of factors, chiefly neglect. “Society as a whole has given up on these people. When somebody is not waking up, it gives people an uncomfortable feeling. It’s easier to say, ‘Nope, they’re not there.”

(And those that believe there is HOPE have their claims and faith disregarded)

EEG tests have shown that brain injured patients can demonstrate consciousness undetectable in a bedside test. And because the technology is portable, cheap and doesn’t require a patient’s active participation.

(We asked for and didn’t get the EEG)

“There are a lot of people out there who could be helped but aren’t,” says Schiff. “All patients should be treated as if they too have that same potential for recovery.”

(Oh this is my hope and prayer) 

Read more details at Source: Brain Imaging Scans Show Some Vegetative Patients Are Living on the Edge of Consciousness by author Don Heupel

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