A father didn't believe his daughter was dead. The hospital harvested her organs
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Even apart from the chilling effect (e.g. hundreds of people, after reading this, resolving to prevent their children becoming organ donors), you would think a hospital administration would be surrounded, like electrons around a nucleus, with lawyers who would never let such an incredibly stupid decision (to undermine parents in cutting off life support) make it out the door. That it was done in a way that impugns organ donation really makes it a 10x fuck-up.
I'm going to confirm my organ donor status in the affirmative after this. It is a nightmare to artificially keep a body with a dead brain in it. I wouldn't want that for myself or any loved one, and that is clearly what actually happened here.
The Guardian wrote a credulous and uncharacteristically bad article that failed its readers in discussing the ethics, the medical details, and the history of the subject. The article's author plays on readers emotions while trying to tie in far broader and complex socioeconomic factors that were well outside of the factors in the specific case here.
The only real issue is one of 3rd party consent. I don't see why a grown adult (26 years old) without advanced directives requires parental consent, but that is what the law seems to say here. I don't think anyone would say the hospital didn't screw that up. Even if the father violently threatened the staff and required police involvement, getting his consent appears to have been required. Even if dozens of innocent people waiting with little hope on donor wait lists would die because of the father's inability to cope with his guilt and grief.
But the hospital did nothing at all wrong by the patient. She was brain dead and kept alive through artificial means, and she was never going to recover.
>But the hospital did nothing at all wrong by the patient. She was brain dead and kept alive through artificial means, and she was never going to recover.
Agreed, the patient had no agency, and all the wrong was done to the parents. Also, I'd just like to recommend that, instead, of updating donor status, you visit end-of-life documents like wills, which are what would have bearing on life support decisions, and more importantly discuss the questions with your relevant family members (those who would make the decision for you, as well as those for whom you would decide).
To be clear, it was just one parent. One parent consented, and the article leaves it at "[the mother] did not respond to repeated requests for an interview".
The article mentions a live-in boyfriend also, and I could find nothing in the article discussing the wishes expressed by - what sounds to be - the domestic partner.
> Brittany was an unmarried adult without adult children. The suit claimed that both organizations had colluded to violate the California Uniform Anatomical Gift Act by conspiring to obtain consent from only one parent instead of the legally required two, and that they made no “reasonable effort” to contact Mike for his consent.
That seems like a pretty open and shut case if they failed to get the legally required consent so I'm curious why this case hasn't been settled yet. Is it because the plaintiff is going for "intentional infliction of emotional distress" and wants them to admit guilt, or is there more to the story?
If the hospital did as alleged, what in the world was the medical team's incentive? I thought organ transplant waiting lists were strictly controlled and there's practically no way any of them would have a relationship to someone on the list. Do they get a bonus per transplant done or something?
> Hospitals are paid for the organ procurement organizations’ use of their operating rooms and surgical resources.
Hospital doctors are forced, day in and day out, to be exposed to people who need transplants. The entire medical system is forced to be exposed to totally, completely innocent people who, through cruel fate alone, need to wait for a suitable someone to die. In a sense, these innocent people's lives are halted in a way that can be argued to be a death themselves. Doctors, who are human beings with empathy (so much so they are at risk of killing themselves from all the suffering they're exposed to) are day in and day out forced to face this insane fateful cruelty.
These doctors see the miracles an organ transplant can do. Give back a single mother her ability to raise her children. Allow the opportunity for a father to see the birth of his child. Enable a child to envision a future for themselves for the first time in their life.
So when someone else is dead, or basically dead, occurs, each doctor knows that this one death can relieve the "deaths" of dozens of other needy and completely innocent people. Especially when the doctor is confident that, effectively, the soul has already left the body and the organ that actually contains our consciousness has died. The family members can be excused as ignorant folks who, unlike doctors, don't get to witness firsthand how much suffering can be relieved by harvesting an already-basically-dead person.
In a situation like that, a doctor can very easily make what they believe to be the moral choice in attempting to persuade a family towards organ harvesting even though they may personally be unrelated to anyone who needs an organ.
And honestly, a bit of ignorance is to be expected here. Most people have never been in the room with a brain-dead person on life support; it's a brand-new scenario to almost anyone.
The docs will have seen and heard stuff like "She is without a doubt responding to my touch..." and "Brain dead patients cannot respond to touch, and she clearly is… right?" from people. They know the reasons - confirmation bias on random movements, body reflexes, etc. - but explaining that to someone in the midst of the worst grief of their lives is... tough.
If the deceased patient had not wanted to donate her organs in the past, unless they had constructive proof that she had later changed her mind, it shouldn't have mattered whether either of her parents would consent to their donation.
If she had been registered as a donor by the time of her death, sure, the question of death becomes extremely relevant. But if she had not wanted to donate her organs, her organs ought not have been donated when she died, regardless of whether that happened before or after the hospital discontinued life support.
The father's claimed conversation about donation is when she was "eight or nine"; I certainly wouldn't want medical decisions made on what I said as a pre-teen.
At some point you have to conside the role of the author of this piece. It appears in this case they'd already decided to write about this case, could not get statements from the mother or doctors/hospital involved, and decided to largely base it on the word of the father, his trial lawyers ("Thornton Davidson, Mike’s lawyer, is surprisingly accessible thanks to a puckish, wry wit") and biased sources like the Catholic Medical Association. The filler about Jahi McMath is awful, and largely avoids the complex family dynamics and the eventual multiorgan failure that led to her own family pulling the plug on her several years later.
The father is grieving her suicide and unable to process it because of people willing to use his cause to advance their political or monetary interests. It is a tragic story, but not for the reasons the article puts forth.
As much as the father sounds a bit unhinged, I wonder if the hospital really was trying all avenues to get her organs donated.
Because there's not a "I don't want to be a donor" registry.
Some countries make it an explicit opt out, which I think is a much better approach.
The father in this story should have just accepted the truth about his daughter: she was already dead.
It was. They murdered a person and stole her organs.
They do appear to have done some procedural misconduct in a complex family scenario, but nothing about this was a murder.
From the sounds of things (the bit from a Dr. Burnett is fairly damning), it sounds like the hospital broke the law in how they handled it.
The hospital administrators (or doctors?) decided the ends justified the means. The policeman decided he was a hired gun with no agency. And here they are.
The family situation was complex. The hospital's legal requirements appear less complex, and they do appear to have violated the law there. (With the caveat that the article heavily relies on the father, his lawyers, and anti-abortion activists. Unless I missed it, the hospital's side is mostly absent.)
Probably I'm objecting to your 'procedural misconduct' phrasing, which appears to minimize an ethical disaster into an understandable mistake in the course of a busy day.
If they do not have the two required consents for the organ transplant, then that is something else, and they should be punished for it.
If they did not get the necessary consent for organ transplants, it is a crime and the ones involved should be punished for that, but obviously not for murder. No one, not even the father is suing them for murder.
It's not murder.
1. Commodification of healthcare will always lead to outcomes which prioritize the bottomline over actual patient care. Externalizing suffering and other costs on the cohort is capitalism 101.
2. Readers of this forum (presumed relatively wealthy and with something to lose) would be well served by getting their EOL legal matters in order: a will, a trust, a power of attorney, &c.
Must have been incredible to have witnessed that news.