Comments on: Over-Enthusiastic Organ Procurement?

By: Robert Walraven

Robert Walraven — Tue, 26 Oct 2004 22:54:52 +0000

Current updates on the issue at hand. MontrosePress October 26, 2004 stated that “Young amended Rardin’s death certificate Friday to indicate he died from a suicide after Dr. James P. Kelly, a Denver neurologist whom he asked to review the case, determined Rardin was pronounced brain dead according to accepted medical standards.” The article followed by saying that, ” Kelly also noted in his report that doctors did not adequately document their brain death diagnosis.” As stated in this stream and various articles, Mr. Young is an elected official performing in the duty of his office with the tools at hand to him, and with the outset of the controversy that occured brought in an expert to help finalize this case. It is admirable that a person, no matter what the critics would have you believe, would stand by any person, alive or partially so, to ensure that ‘all’ procedures have been followed correctly. That is what is at issue here, not about the harvesting or not harvesting of organs, just to prevent what has happened and has been documented in the past of organs being taken prematurely. I am glad that we have at least one elected official who does not sit back and just “rubber stamp” the documents placed in his department.

By: Gweipo

Gweipo — Mon, 25 Oct 2004 05:09:34 +0000

I thought of doing a case study once on China and the modernization of their body parts industry. It’s an ingenious industry, since they get the inventory for free – they sell the body parts of prisoners. Ten years ago, everyone in China and Hong Kong knew that the best time of year to get body parts was around Chinese New Year, since it’s an ancient Chinese custom to have executions around holidays (troublemakers are much quieter after they’ve been executed, plus watching it is good family fun, as it used to be in England). But, of course, this didn’t always fit the customers’ schedules. There were executions around other holidays too, but the Communist Party generally liked to save executions up for special days, and that didn’t always fit the market. So, they added “just in time” executions, where for an extra fee you could have a prisoner with the right blood type killed to order. Of course, the best selection and prices are still around major holidays, if you’re looking for a bargain. And they’ve also added quality controls. It used to be that they shot prisoners through the head, since most of the saleable organs were lower down. But if there was a special order for the corneas, they would shoot the prisoner in the chest instead. Either way, valuable inventory was damaged, so they’ve started using lethal injections and have even begun carrying out death sentences in vans, making it easier to get the donor to the hospital to harvest the organs. They used to do it in stadiums, in front of those holiday crowds, but that made quality control more difficult. In other words, they have developed a thriving industry that has followed the dictates of business schools – just in time inventory, greater quality controls, modern technology all around. And the ingenious part is that they get the inventory for free. They’ve traditionally made the family of the prisoner pay for the bullet used to shot the person through the head (but I don’t know if the family now has to pay for the needle). Families certainly don’t get a share of the large fee charged for the organs. Doctors in New York have reported having more and more Chinese patients that bought their organs in the “People’s Republic”. But it’s not for the rest of us – they only sell to Chinese. I guess this is my own gruesome complement to this thread.

By: Mrs. Coulter

Mrs. Coulter — Sat, 23 Oct 2004 04:15:09 +0000

Eeek, let me correct myself. The L&O episode is “Harvest”. “The Harvest” is an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

By: Mrs. Coulter

Mrs. Coulter — Sat, 23 Oct 2004 04:12:04 +0000

Strangely enough, this was the plot of a Law and Order episode that aired in 1997, titled “The Harvest”.

By: NancyP

NancyP — Fri, 22 Oct 2004 04:56:28 +0000

That is truly sad about the child. But perhaps not unprecedented. Every once in a while, there is a report of a person who has left a dead spouse or child in situ (bed, usually) in the house for an extended period of time, months or years.

By: HP

HP — Thu, 21 Oct 2004 23:00:33 +0000

Apologies to all for multiple post. Multiple 500 errors, and I and double-checked several times before resending. Such a stooge.

By: HP

HP — Thu, 21 Oct 2004 22:57:42 +0000

This story provides a gruesome complement to the issues in this thread. Parents in Utah refuse to take their dead son off life support, even though his tissues have already begun to decay. Further, they want the hospital to release their "son" (read: decaying corpse) into their custody so they can apply holistic treatments at home. It puts me in mind of M. Valdemar. And a Happy Halloween to all.

By: HP

HP — Thu, 21 Oct 2004 22:56:51 +0000

By: HP

HP — Thu, 21 Oct 2004 22:55:35 +0000

By: HP

HP — Thu, 21 Oct 2004 22:54:49 +0000

By: bellatrys

bellatrys — Thu, 21 Oct 2004 22:01:21 +0000

This has been a popular meme among conservatives for as long as I can remember (circa 1975) and goes along with the claims that the Evil LiberalAtheistFeministFags are going to take kids away from their parents, sterilize those with more than two children, and enforce mandatory Free Sex as they forbid all practice of religion. This will be matched with mandatory euthanasia (a new development of this is “under UN aegis”, combining the dreaded Blue Helmets into the conspiracy mythos – it’s better than the Illuminati, you can work in everyone) of the elderly and disabled, whose organs will then be harvested and given to rich liberals. The amount of flakiness varies, but it was a staple of editorials in the Wanderer, the Remnant, and Triumph magazine, of which the Wanderer is still around, and the authorship of the others has morphed around until some of them are writing for Crisis and so forth. Then there is Thomas Sowell, who thinks that poor people ought to be allowed to sell their spare organs to the rich, combining Free Enterprise tropes into it all. They don’t make enough tinfoil in a year to cover the intellectual heirs of Ford and Sears…

By: Lindsay Beyerstein

Lindsay Beyerstein — Thu, 21 Oct 2004 20:02:44 +0000

Not only is the coroner of Montrose County not a doctor, he made his ruling without consulting the doctors in question, or leading medical experts. He asked the local DA instead.

Young, a part-time coroner who makes his living as a paramedic, said he consulted with District Attorney Tom Raynes and determined that the declaration of brain death did not meet “acceptable medical standards” in finding that Rardin was legally brain dead after he’d shot himself in the head.

Rocky Mountain News

By: Lindsay Beyerstein

Lindsay Beyerstein — Thu, 21 Oct 2004 19:54:43 +0000

Not only is the coroner of Montrose County not a doctor, he made his ruling without consulting the doctors in question, or leading medical experts. He asked the local DA instead.

Young, a part-time coroner who makes his living as a paramedic, said he consulted with District Attorney Tom Raynes and determined that the declaration of brain death did not meet “acceptable medical standards” in finding that Rardin was legally brain dead after he’d shot himself in the head.

Rocky Mountain News

By: Mark

Mark — Thu, 21 Oct 2004 17:19:46 +0000

I’d like to chop this story off at the knees, and harvest it’s organs, to mix metaphors – Firstly, Those reading this thread should be aware that the position of Coroner here in Colorado is an elected position, and requires no medical background or training. In this case, I believe, the Coroners medical experience is based entirely around a period of employment as a paramedic. Secondly, heres the report on this incident: Montrose – Montrose County Coroner Mark Young was reckless and mistaken when he declared that a Montrose suicide victim died from having his organs removed for transplant. That was the finding of a committee of coroners, physicians, district attorneys and organ-donor specialists who studied medical records and looked into Young’s actions in declaring the death of William Rardin a homicide. “There was no deviation from acceptable medical standards. … There was no homicide by removal of organs,” Montrose District Attorney Thomas Raynes said during a news conference Tuesday at Montrose Memorial Hospital. Raynes called the news conference to reveal the findings of the seven-person team that met Friday in Denver to determine whether the removal of organs from Rardin on Sept. 28 was done properly. Young announced last week that Rardin, 31, was not brain- dead when his heart, liver, pancreas and kidneys were removed after he had shot himself in the head Sept. 26. Medical personnel at Montrose Memorial Hospital determined Rardin was mortally wounded, and his body was flown to St. Mary’s Hospital in Grand Junction for the organ removal. Young had said that Rardin was pronounced dead at Montrose Memorial and again at St. Mary’s, but Raynes said physicians at Montrose consulted with physicians at St. Mary’s and determined that the detailed tests for brain death and an official declaration of death would be made at St. Mary’s. Rardin was tested and pronounced dead that same night. Young was contacted less than two hours later and officially released Rardin’s body for organ removal, the committee’s investigation showed. Before his organs were removed, the team’s investigation found, routine clinical observations of brainstem activity – gag-reflex tests, eye- movement observations, etc. – were performed and an apnea test that measures gases in the bloodstream was done.

By: adoherty

adoherty — Thu, 21 Oct 2004 17:05:07 +0000

According to the US Center for Disease Control (CDC), coroners in Ohio must be doctors who have practiced for at least two years. http://www.cdc.gov/epo/dphsi/mecisp/ohio.htm