Critical organ donation warnings and guidance in new pamphlet: “Do not do an Apnea test!”

By Steve Jalsevac

April 26, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Dr. Paul Byrne has been on a personal mission for many years to warn the public about the alarming facts and dangers of the $20 billion dollar-a-year organ transplant industry.  At the International Conference for Life in Vatican City February 25, Byrne and other distinguished speakers, including Cardinal Raymond Burke, addressed serious concerns regarding so-called “brain death”, the apnea test and organ transplantation. Dr. Bryne also introduced a new 29-page booklet produced by his Life Guardian Foundation containing crucial information to assist the public in making informed decisions about organ donation.

The new Life Guardian booklet which Dr. Byrne briefly describes in a LifeSiteNews video interview recorded in Rome, is divided into six main sections:

• Facts About Being an Organ Donor - What you don’t know can kill you
• Do Your Organs Belong to the Government?
• Are You Thinking About Organ Transplantation? Making an Informed Decision
• Manipulation of Beginning and End of Human Life
• Catholic Teaching on Death and Organ Transplantation

The last part of the booklet contains tear-out forms, with instructions, intended to protect its readers from premature declarations of death that can result in imposed death, followed by subsequent unethical removal of their organs.

Dr. Byrne believes such forms are necessary due to increasingly hurried and flawed death declarations and the very aggressive tactics of the organ transplant industry.

The first form, a basic, Power of Attorney for Health Care, is followed by three complimentary, additional forms:

1. Directions to Protect and Preserve Life for Power of Attorney for Health Care
2. Directions to Protect and Protect and Preserve Life and Health Care Representative Serving as an Agent for Dependent Person who is a Minor or Mentally incapacitated person
3. Directions to Protect and Preserve Life to be carried at all times in case of sudden accident or serious illness

Each of he last three forms includes the strict, bolded direction, “Do not hasten death. Do not shorten death. Do not do an apnea test. Do not take any organ for transplantation or any other purpose.”
The reference to the apnea test reflects grave concerns by Dr. Bryne and other medical professionals that this deadly procedure frequently hastens the death of those being “tested,” some of whom might yet recover, since they are deprived of ventilation for the dangerously long period of time set to determine if they can breathe on their own.

Byrne writes, “Knowing full well how critical the ventilator is, to withdraw it when it is needed most is absurd! Yet, it is planned for the patient to be taken off for up to 10 minutes - the patient can only get worse! This test is sometimes lethal. Make sure to instruct all medical staff: “Do not do an Apnea test!”

Dr. Byrne contacted LifeSiteNews to add, “carbon dioxide normally remains below 45 in us and when a patient is on a ventilator, the goal is to keep the carbon dioxide below 45. When doing an apnea test (the test for sleep apnea is not an apnea test), the respiration supporting ventilator is taken from the patient causing the carbon dioxide to increase to at least 60, and sometimes higher. When the carbon dioxide goes to these levels, swelling in the brain occurs or gets worse if it is already present. This is tantamount to suffocation.”

“The ventilator can be effective only in someone living” emphasizes Byrne. “The ventilator pushes air into the lungs; the air goes out (exhaled) only when and because the living body pushes it out. This does not occur in a cadaver/corpse/dead body.”

Although parts of the Life Guardian Pamphlet are directed to Catholics who are considering becoming organ donors, there is also much medical/ethical information applicable to a more general audience.

The medical credentials of Dr. Byrne have given considerable weight to the credibility of his presentations on the controversial topics which he has traveled to numerous countries to speak about. The new booklet describes Byrnes credentials as follows:

Dr. Paul Byrne, a Neonatologist is Director of Neonatology and Director of Pediatrics at St. Charles Mercy Hospital in Oregon, Ohio; Clinical Professor of Pediatrics, University of Toledo College of Medicine; Board Certified in Pediatrics and Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine: Member of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars; past-President of the Catholic Medical Association (USA); and author of numerous articles on “brain death” and organ transplantation in medical and law journals and lay press. He is the producer of the film Continuum of Life and the author of Life, Life Support and Death, Beyond Brain Death, and Brain Death is Not Death. Dr. Byrne has presented testimony on life-death issues to nine state legislatures beginning in 1967, He opposed Dr. Jack Kevorkian on Cross-Fire, and has appeared on Good Morning America, the BBC documentary, “Are the donors really dead?” and public television in Japan.

See yesterday’s related LifeSiteNews report with many other related links, Dad rescues ‘brain dead’ son from doctors wishing to harvest his organs - boy recovers completely

Link:

• Critical organ donation warnings and guidance in new pamphlet: “Do not do an Apnea test!”

Related:

• Dad rescues ‘brain dead’ son from doctors wishing to harvest his organs – boy recovers completely

Dad rescues ‘brain dead’ son from doctors wishing to harvest his organs – boy recovers completely

From LifeSiteNews.com:

LEICESTER, England, April 25, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - According to the Daily Mail newspaper, a young British man owes his life to an insistent father who would not allow his son’s organs to be removed from his body, despite assurances from four doctors that his son could not recover from the wounds he had suffered in a recent car accident.

The Mail reports that Stephen Thorpe, then 17, was placed in a medically-induced coma following a multi-car pileup that had already taken the life of his friend Matthew, who was driving the vehicle.

Although a team of four physicians insisted that his son was “brain-dead” following the wreck, Thorpe’s father enlisted the help of a general practitioner and a neurologist, who demonstrated that his son still had brain wave activity.  The doctors agreed to bring him out of the coma, and five weeks later Thorpe left the hospital, having almost completely recovered.

Today, the 21-year-old with “brain damage” is studying accounting at a local university. “‘My impression is maybe the hospital weren’t very happy that my father wanted a second opinion,” he told the Mail.

The case is similar to dozens of others LifeSiteNews has reported in recent years, in which comatose or otherwise unconscious patients are declared to be “brain dead,” or hopelessly incurable. In many cases, aggressive doctors seek the organs of the patient for harvesting.

In 2011, the Quebec Hospital Sainte Croix de Drummondville sought permission to extract the eyes of a patient who had choked on hospital food in the absence of a nurse, claiming she was “brain dead.” After the family demanded proof from physicians of her alleged condition, she regained consciousness, and recovered most of her faculties. The family declared its intention to sue the hospital.

In 2008, a 45-year-old Frenchman revived on the operating table as doctors prepared to “harvest” his organs for donation, following cardiac arrest. In the subsequent investigation by the hospital’s ethics committee, a number of doctors admitted that such cases, while rare, were well known to them.

That same year, a “brain dead” 21-year-old American, Zack Dunlap, was about to have his organs harvested when his two sisters, both nurses, decided to test the hospital’s theory that his brain was no longer functioning. Family members poked his feet with a knife and dug their fingernails under his nails, provoking strong reactions by Dunlap and proving he was conscious. He recovered completely. He later related that he was conscious and aware as doctors discussed harvesting his organs in his presence.

The term “brain death” was invented in 1968 to accommodate the need to acquire vital organs in their “freshest” state from a donor who some argue is still very much alive.

While death had previously been defined as lack of respiration and heart activity, “brain death” was judged as compatible with an otherwise living patient. “Brain death” has never been rigorously defined, and there are no standardized tests to determine if the condition exists.

Dr. John Shea, a medical advisor to LifeSiteNews.com, points out that patients diagnosed as “brain dead” often continue to exhibit brain functions.

In “Organ Donation: The Inconvenient Truth”, Shea states that the criteria for “brain death” only “test for the absence of some specific brain reflexes. Functions of the brain that are not considered are temperature control, blood pressure, cardiac rate and salt and water balance. When a patient is declared brain dead, these functions are not only still present, but also frequently active.”

A list of articles by LifeSiteNews on comotose and “brain dead” patients who unexpectedly recovered follows:

* Brain dead’ woman recovers after husband refuses to withdraw life support
* Woman Diagnosed as “Brain Dead” Walks and Talks after Awakening
* ‘Brain dead’ Quebec woman wakes up after family refuses organ donation
* Doctor Says about “Brain Dead” Man Saved from Organ Harvesting - “Brain Death is Never Really Death”
* Doctors Who Almost Dissected Living Patient Confess Ignorance about Actual Moment of Death
* New study questions “brain-death” criterion for organ donation
* Coma Recovery After 19 Years Poses Questions About Terri Schiavo
* Polish Man Wakes from 19-Year “Coma”, Talks and Expected to Walk Soon
* Man Wakes from Two-Year Coma – was Aware and Remembers Everything
* Boy in “Hopeless” Vegetative State Awakens and Steadily Improves
* Commentary: The Significance of that Case of the Man Trapped in a “Coma” for 23 Years
* Girl Once Comatose and Scheduled for Euthanasia Will Testify against Attacker
* ‘Comatose’ UK Man Chooses Life by Moving Eyes
* Woman’s Waking After Brain Death Raises Many Questions About Organ Donation
* Russian Surgeons Removing Organs Saying Patients Almost Dead Anyway
* Denver Coroner Rules “Homicide” in Organ-Donor Case

Related links:

The boy who came back from the dead: Experts said car crash teen was beyond hope. His parents disagreed

Link:

• Dad rescues ‘brain dead’ son from doctors wishing to harvest his organs – boy recovers completely