GHOULISH NEW ORGAN PROCUREMENT PROCEDURE!

HALO is the current manifestation of the small national pro life group for which I was chairman in the 2010s.

GHOULISH NEW ORGAN
PROCUREMENT PROCEDURE!

By Julie Grimstad
6-20-23

Most people who agree to be organ donors think they will be dead – that is, they will have died in a natural way – before any procedure is begun to obtain their organs. Think again.[1]

The ethics of organ donation is based on the “dead donor rule.” According to this rule, a patient should not be killed for or by the donation of their organs. If the dead donor rule were scrupulously followed, vital organs would not be harvested from people who have signs of life. Unfortunately, it is not.

A new organ procurement protocol is being rolled out: normothermic regional perfusion with controlled donation after circulatory death (DCDNRP). That’s a very long title for a ghoulish method of obtaining healthy hearts and other vital organs for transplantation.

First, what is Donation after Circulatory Death?

Donation after circulatory death (DCD) has been used to procure vital organs for a couple of decades. Currently, approximately 20% of organ procurement is by DCD.

Here is a simple explanation of DCD. A ventilator-dependent patient who cannot be declared “brain dead” is taken to the operating room where the ventilator is removed. When the surgical team can no longer detect a heartbeat, they wait two to five minutes before declaring the patient dead and quickly extract the person’s vital organs. (Note: Two to five minutes without a detectable heartbeat is not long enough to be certain the person is dead.)

DCD heart transplants are rare due to concern about the viability of a patient’s heart after the cessation of circulation. The expectation is that NRPDCD will make more healthy hearts available for transplantation.

A Ghoulish Procedure

NRPDCD is fraught with ethical concerns. This protocol, developed by the University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, is described in horrifying detail at clinicaltrials.gov.[2] Briefly, here is the process.

The patient (donor) is removed from life support. Once the heart has stopped (so-called “circulatory death”), the surgeons wait five minutes to see if the heart restarts on its own.
Next, surgeons cut open the chest cavity, then sever blood flow to the brain, ensuring the death of the brain.
The circulatory system is artificially restarted with an external pump. The heart is restarted, keeping it and other organs functioning and viable for harvesting.

The opening of the chest occurs before the blood flow to the brain is severed. It is very possible that the donor is aware of what is happening to him or her. Unthinkable horror!

NRPDCD is akin to cutting off the patient’s head before harvesting his or her organs. It is a clear violation of the dead donor rule.

Protect yourself!

HALO’s reason for being is to protect the medically vulnerable. No one is more vulnerable than a patient who is ventilator-dependent and a prospective organ donor. We warn repeatedly that it is not safe to consent to organ donation. And, with every innovation designed to procure more organs for the lucrative transplant industry, it becomes more urgent that people protect themselves.

HALO's most frequently requested resource is the “I Refuse to Be an Organ Donor” wallet card, an indication that people are becoming increasingly leery about donating their vital organs. To obtain a wallet card, email your request to feedback@halovoice.org.


[1] HALO fact sheet “Are Organ Donors Truly Dead Before Their Organs Are Taken?” https://halovoice.org/wp-content/up...-Truly-Dead-Before-Their-Organs-Are-Taken.pdf
[2] “Safety and Effectiveness of NRP for DCD Heart Transplantation (DCDNRPHeart),” https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04626284

 

Me too. In too many cases, it is literally a death sentence

 

A close friend, “Nurse Claire” on the Ann Barnhardt podcast, worked in a hospital with the doctor named in the article below.

She states,

The DCD stuff was always rife with unethical behavior. I have not personally witnessed it but I’ve heard stories of morphine being given when the patients don’t die quick enough after extubated.​

https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2008/12/18/dr-hootan-roozrokh-not-guilty-in-organ-harvesting-case/amp/

Dr. Hootan Roozrokh not guilty in organ harvesting case

• Associated Press
  
• 
  PUBLISHED: December 18, 2008 at 9:48 p.m. | UPDATED: August 15, 2016 at 5:53 p.m.
  
  
• News

LOS ANGELES — A San Francisco transplant surgeon accused of hastening the death of a man so his organs could be harvested was acquitted Thursday of dependent adult abuse in a case that led to national organ transplant reforms.

Dr. Hootan Roozrokh was found not guilty in San Luis Obispo County Superior Court by a jury that deliberated for more than two days. He would have faced up to four years in prison had he been convicted. A judge dismissed two other felony counts in March.

The case was believed to be the first of its kind brought against a transplant doctor in the United States.

Roozrokh, 34, was accused of prescribing too much medication to Ruben Navarro, 26, when he died in February 2006 at a San Luis Obispo hospital. He had a debilitating neurological disease and was in a coma after a heart attack. Roozrokh testified in his own defense, saying he did not try to hasten Navarro’s death but did order painkillers to ensure the patient would not suffer when being withdrawn from life support.

“It was a prosecution that never should have been initiated,” defense attorney M. Gerald Schwartzbach said in a telephone interview from San Luis Obispo, on the central coast northwest of Los Angeles.

A phone message left for prosecutor Karen Gray seeking comment on the verdict was not immediately returned.

Navarro’s mother authorized harvesting of his organs but because he was not brain dead, it was determined that the transplant procedure to be used would be “Donation after Cardiac Death,” known as DCD, which requires withdrawal of life support leading to death prior to recovery of organs.

As it turned out, Navarro’s organs could not be harvested because he did not die within an hour after being removed from life support. He died eight hours later.

During the trial, the prosecution relied on testimony of a doctor and nurse who accused Roozrokh of administering drugs to speed up Navarro’s death. The attending physician, Dr. Laura Lubarsky, was given immunity from prosecution for her testimony. She said she did not realize she was in charge that night.

“I had never experienced anything like that before, and I assumed they were following some sort of protocol,” she testified.

Roozrokh testified that hospital staff and a transplant coordinator abdicated their duty to take care of the patient at Sierra Vista Regional Medical Center, leaving him no choice but to order the use of drugs.

“I felt he could suffer. My concern was to ensure Ruben would not suffer. No one was taking care of him,” the defendant said.

Gray claimed it was a conflict of interest for Roozrokh, the transplant surgeon, to oversee care for the patient and said he ordered excessive amounts of morphine and the sedative Ativan.

Schwartzbach called an expert who said the dose was not excessive and another expert who came from Ohio to testify, saying he wanted to prevent harm to the practice of organ transplantation.

The Roozrokh case prompted the United Network for Organ Sharing last year to develop rules for cardiac-death donation and required 257 transplant hospitals and 58 organ procurement groups to do the same. Before that, the effort depended on individual hospitals or groups.

In a statement read by the judge, the jury said Navarro’s case identified important work that needed to be done to keep DCD “a viable option for organ donation in this country.”

“Refining the nationwide protocol of DCD organ procurements will be an important part of Ruben’s legacy and for that we pay him our respect and owe him our thanks,” the jury said.

Mistakes in cardiac-death cases shouldn’t happen again because “there are protocols in place now across the country to make sure such errors don’t occur,” Schwartzbach said.

It’s unknown whether Roozrokh, who was on paid leave, will return to his job, but Schwartzbach said he talked with his client’s employers who indicated they want him to come back.

“It’s too early to tell what he will do,” Schwartzbach said. “This has been an enormous ordeal for him. He’ll need some personal R&R.”