(LifeNews.com) A mother in England is filing suit against a hospital where doctors told
her she should have an abortion of her supposedly “brain dead” unborn
baby. Sarah Hagan is now suing City Hospitals Sunderland after giving
birth to a healthy child.
Hagan says that, after a 24-week ultrasound scan of her unborn baby,
doctors told her that her son Aaron was “brain dead,” had just one eye
and no chance of survival.
The mother of two says physicians adviser her to take an abortion
drug, even though the mifepristone abortion pill is only authorized to
be used to destroy the life of an unborn baby much earlier in pregnancy.
When the abortion drug didn’t work, another doctor informed Hagan her
baby needed to be delivered immediately and she gave birth to Aaron,
who was born at 1lb 7oz with both eyes and healthy other than the fact
that he was born prematurely — which has left him with chronic lung
problems he wouldn’t have had otherwise. Now Aaron is 15 months old and
Hagan is taking legal action.
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:
Directions to Protect and Preserve Life for Power of Attorney for Health Care
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
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.
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:
(LifeNews.com) A mother in England is filing suit against a hospital where doctors told
her she should have an abortion of her supposedly “brain dead” unborn
baby. Sarah Hagan is now suing City Hospitals Sunderland after giving
birth to a healthy child.
