Last year, a young man I knew suffered an undiagnosed brain aneurysm which burst on his way to work.  He was driving down the interstate at the time and wandered across the median where he hit an oncoming car head-on.   Thanks to the testimony of a witness traveling behind him, the paramedics and emergency staff immediately diagnosed him as possibly suffering an aneurysm.  They got him into treatment right away but unfortunately on the second day in the ICU, he had a brain-stem stroke:  basically, the worst kind.  By this time, mutual friends had let me know what happened, and I was making emergency arrangements to travel to his city.

At this point, I should tell you that Andy was a phenomenal human being, just really the kind of son that every parent would want to raise.  He was considerate, respectful, fun-loving, loyal, adventurous, faithful, and joyous.  His MySpace listed his father as his hero and his concerns were always his family, both his parents and especially his younger sister.  To my knowledge, he never went through a period of rebellion, and never was ‘embarrassed’ by his parents, as so many kids feel at least temporarily.   His family had raised Andy in a very evangelical church and though he had a lot of fun in college and afterward, he never strayed very far and I must say again, that he was one of the most thoughtful, kind, and generous people I’ve ever met. 

As I was getting ready to travel to see him, a team of doctors were testing Andy’s brain responses.  Though he had some functioning, and could breathe on his own, they determined that he was “brain-dead” and recommended to his devastated family that they sign-off on harvesting his organs.  Now, absolutely, Andy would have wanted to help others through donations of his working organs.  His parents clearly knew this too.  They sadly agreed, having spent several days in shock in the hospital.  However, when I heard about this decision, I was stunned.  I am by no means a medical expert but I know a little about medical issues.  I kept asking  our mutual friends if they were explaining the story correctly.  How could the doctors declare Andy ‘brain dead’ when he passed the functioning test and could breathe on his own?  This really made no sense to me.  I asked them over and over to explain the details to me.

The declaration of ‘brain dead’ was made on a Monday and on Tuesday morning, a team of specialists collected his vital organs and Andy died.  He was 27.

I never made it in time to say goodbye.     

At the funeral, I was not surprised to see that his date of death was not listed as Monday;  it was listed for Tuesday….the day they harvested his organs.  Andy did not die when he had the stroke;  he died when they removed his heart.  To this day, I believe that Andy didn’t die.   I believe he was, in effect, murdered.  His poor grieving family trusted a team of doctors to inform them fully and ethically and I think they were not informed well, if at all. 

I later did a lot of research on brain injury, the tests to determine a brain death, the standards and the ethics.  It turns out, over the last decade, the definition of ‘brain dead’ has gotten broader and broader and can now be made with criteria set locally by the physician in charge at the hospital.  A second doctor needs to sign off on it, but in reality, the second doctor rarely if ever disagrees, especially in the case of organ donors.  The reason?  well, because those organs getting donated aren’t getting any fresher sitting inside a still-living person.  Make no mistake about it:  there is alot of pressure put on doctors to declare a brain injury victim “brain dead” so  that harvesting can move forward.   Until Andy died, I had no idea that we were so far down the slippery slope.  Terri Schiavo should have prepared me…but it had not.

More on: http://lucemichael.wordpress.com/2009/10/09/suffer-the-people-in-vegetative-states-to-come-unto-me/







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