Neurologist exposes ‘brain death’ myth behind multi-billion-dollar organ transplant industry

Excerpts from article on LifeSiteNews.com. I encourage you to go read the ENTIRE article there by Diane Montagna.

I am excerpting this here because we recently had a traumatic event in Ann Arbor at Motts Children’s Hospital at Michigan Medicine. A 14 year old boy named Bobby was taken off life support against the request of his parents.

The original lawyer filed the stay in the WRONG court.

By the time they hired Bill negotiations were ongoing with U of M to give them time to find a replacement hospital to take Bobby. The hospital that had agreed changed their mind and they had to start over and had ONLY 2 days.

Judge Swartz had no authority to give a stay, both parties U of M and Bobby’s attorney agreed on this.

Judge Swartz didn’t have legal authority to rule one way or the other. The court that the attorney had to file in is called the Court of Common Complaints and was an hour and a half away. They would not let Bobby’s attorney file via fax or email or pay with a credit card.

So U of M did the 2nd brain death test, pronounced him dead and pulled Bobby OFF the ventilator. TRAGIC and HEARTBREAKING.

However, and I have been trying to say this in a gentle way to people who are upset with U of M.

THERE IS NOT A HOSPITAL IN THE US WHO WOULD HAVE DONE ANY DIFFERENT.

They are following the Uniform Determination of Death Act, go read it. The UDDA granted hospitals the ability to set up their own protocols. But they are all very similar.

The Uniform Determination of Death Act (UDDA), drafted in 1980 by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws to provide “comprehensive bases for determining death in all situations,” determined death by the following criteria:

“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.”

The only way to change tragedies like Bobby and my son Jamie is to:
1) Educate the public on what “brain death.” is vs TRUE DEATH.
2) Change the law

In the meantime, get off the organ register. Thankfully my son was NOT on it, had he been they could have legally harvested them anyway because they see it as a legally, binding contract.

Parents have no say, if your child has signed. NONE

Excerpts:

A respected Brazilian neurologist, Dr. Cicero Coimbra, is seeking to blow the lid off the “brain death” myth, saying it is being perpetuated to supply an international multi-billion-dollar transplant industry. 

Doctor Cicero G. Coimbra, MD PhD, a neurologist and professor of neuroscience at the Federal University of São Paulo, Brazil, has also said recovery for comatose patients is often possible, but a tightly controlled medical establishment is not giving doctors and medical students the facts they need to “do the best they can” for their patients.

By the 1980s, when organ transplants were performed around the world, medical researchers experimenting on animals discovered that when blood flow to the brain is reduced from the normal range to just 20-50 percent, the brain would “fall silent” — but was neither “dead” nor “irreversibly damaged.” By the end of the 1990s, this phenomenon — called “ischemic penumbra” — was demonstrated in humans, shattering the “brain death” myth.

The brain is silent but not dead, he said.

“Why is the ‘brain death’ theory still so prevalent, and what are students in medical school being taught about this?” LifeSite asked Dr. Coimbra.

Apnea Test

“In a very large number of those patients, they have no damage at all — no brain damage at all — they just have a silent brain,” he added.  

To compound the problem, Dr. Coimbra said the standard test used for screening “brain death” — called the “apnea test” — can actually induce irreversible brain damage to an already comatose patient, by reducing the blood and oxygen to the brain for 10 minutes.  

Dr. Coimbra said he has seen firsthand that there is hope for patients who have been labeled “brain dead.” If doctors would simply replace three essential (thyroid and adrenal) hormones, “the normal circulation to the brain would be restored,” he explained. But when these hormones are not replaced, the patient progresses “into a disaster.” 

The problem is that one of the tests used to diagnose “brain death” — called the “apnea test” — involves switching off the respirator. You disconnect the respirator for 10 minutes. When you do that, the high level of carbon dioxide increases sharply. This in turn further increases intracranial pressure and may decrease arterial pressure. So, you increase the compression on the brain vessels and you decrease the pressure within the brain vessels during the apnea test.

What was the purpose of the apnea test? 

The aim of the apnea test is to demonstrate that the patient cannot breathe on his own. 

But imagine for a moment: the respirator is disconnected from the lungs for 10 minutes. In order to breathe on your own, you need your respiratory centers in your brain to be working. They control the diaphragm and the respiratory muscles in general. If you switch off the respirator, and there is no breathing for 10 minutes, they say: “Ok, you see, this is one more piece of evidence that the patient is dead, because he cannot breathe on his own.” The apnea test is considered the fundamental test to diagnose “brain death.” No medical doctor anywhere in the world would diagnose “brain death” without doing this test. So, whenever you hear that a certain patient has been diagnosed as “brain dead,” you know that the apnea test has been performed. 

Why isn’t the apnea test legitimate?

It’s not legitimate. Actually, it disrupts the most basic concepts of medicine. For instance, imagine if I prevent you from breathing for 10 minutes, what will happen? You will die.

But in this case, a respirator is helping the person to breathe.

You can actually destroy the respiratory centers — as you can damage all parts of the brain — by further reducing the blood flow during the apnea test. Forty percent of the patients who are submitted to the apnea test have a major drop in their blood flow, in their blood pressure. Blood pressure is the pressure that is within the arteries; it’s the pressure that provides the driving force to maintain circulation in the brain. So, when you perform the apnea test, you may actually induce irreversible damage to the brain when you were only supposed to diagnose irreversible brain damage.

Read more on Dr. Combra’s discussion on what happened to him, what hormones are necessary to treat a patient who’s brain has gone silent but not dead. What does the medical community think?

What the interview with Dr. Combra here.