Dead babies' hearts taken after 75 seconds (1 Viewer)

[katie tully]

DOCTORS who waited just 75 seconds after the final heartbeat before removing the hearts of dying newborns for transplants said they improved their odds of success but have also raised ethical questions about organ harvesting.

The cases of two children who died between May 2004 and May 2007, and a third in which doctors waited three minutes, are detailed in a report and a series of commentaries in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The technique is controversial because the waiting time recommended by the Institute of Medicine has been five minutes, unless the patient is brain dead. The three babies were not, although all had severe brain damage.

But the doctors who performed the transplants said moving quickly helped save the lives of three infant recipients.

The matter is particularly critical for infants who desperately need a heart transplant.

"Each year, as many as 50 infants are placed on the waiting list for cardiac transplantation but die while waiting, owing to the lack of a suitable donor heart," the journal's executive editor Dr Gregory Curfman and others wrote.

Historically, death was defined by a stopped heart. But the longer an oxygen-starved heart sits in a warm chest cavity, the lower the likelihood it can be successfully transplanted.

So doctors are struggling to define "circulatory death," to determine when the heart has beaten for the last time once life support has been withdrawn.

In the first case, the Denver team waited three minutes after what appeared to be the last heartbeat. But because there has never been a case where the heart restarted itself after 60 seconds, they waited only 75 seconds for their next two cases.

Dr Mark Boucek, who led the Denver team and who now is at the Joe DiMaggio Children's Hospital in Hollywood, Florida, said that when the decision is made to let a baby die, life support is removed and the heart quickly begins to deteriorate as it suffers from oxygen starvation, making it less viable for transplantation.

In the case of the three newborn infants, death took as long as 27.5 minutes.

"Adding an additional two, three or five minutes, or even 75 seconds, does add some additional injury. It could be 10 per cent," he said.

"The six-month survival rate was 100 per cent for the 3 transplant recipients and 84 per cent for 17 control infants who received transplants procured through standard organ donation," Dr Boucek's team wrote.

All three dying infants, each just a few days old, had severe brain damage, were given painkillers and an anti-anxiety drug before life support was removed.

"As a result of their investigational protocol, three babies are now alive; had the procedures not been performed, it is virtually certain that all six babies would be dead," Curfman and the other editors wrote.

Dr. James Bernat of Dartmouth Medical School in Hanover, N.H., predicted in one commentary that when leaders in relevant fields reach consensus, they will conclude that harvesting after just 75 seconds is too hasty.

"Removing organs from a patient whose heart not only can be restarted, but also has been or will be restarted in another body, is ending a life by organ removal," Dr. Robert Veatch of Georgetown University in Washington concurred.

Comments?

 

[*TRUE*]

Difficult to say.
Would depend on the individual case i think.

 

[Dr.Chau]

To me, if you're clinically (i.e. brain dead) dead, you're dead. No point trying to gloss over it. If you're dead after 75 seconds, you'll most likely remain dead after 5 minutes.

I think the doctors have done a good job in saving those 3 infants.

 

[Enteebee]

I lean towards it's the right thing to do but I would want the relevant medical researchers to come to a consensus about what the proceedure should be.

 

[jb_nc]

To me, if you're clinically (i.e. brain dead) dead, you're dead. No point trying to gloss over it. If you're dead after 75 seconds, you'll most likely remain dead after 5 minutes.

I think the doctors have done a good job in saving those 3 infants.

You don't become brain dead until like 5 minutes after oxygen stops going to your brain.

 

[Dr.Chau]

You don't become brain dead until like 5 minutes after oxygen stops going to your brain.

Well, I'm not that well versed in medicine, so I really don't know what I'm talking about, but my point is: If you're most likely dead, like the doctors pretty much say that there is 0% chance of survival, then the doctors should be able to rip shit out of the body and put it into other people.

 

[Dr.Chau]

Hypoxia and Anoxia lead to brain death. If the children are already mostly brain dead then the transplant should go ahead.

However; if the Medical Association has a guideline, it's usually for a very good reason.

Agreed.

 

[katie tully]

You don't become brain dead until like 5 minutes after oxygen stops going to your brain.

But after 5 minutes you're risking the integrity of the organs.

And if you honestly have to wait 5 minutes to ensure they're really dead, then doesn't it defeat the purpose ...

 

[katie tully]

The only concern I have is whether it's setting a dangerous precedent.

Obviously in bigger humans with a bigger blood volume there is more room to make decisions, because the oxygen is completely depleted ... But in babies I think people get a bit emotional, nobody likes the idea of cutting up a baby, and if you think about it being done so soon after life support being switched off ... obviously there will be people against it.

I just hope it doesn't deter people from donating organs

 

[jb_nc]

Hypoxia and Anoxia lead to brain death. If the children are already mostly brain dead then the transplant should go ahead.

However; if the Medical Association has a guideline, it's usually for a very good reason.

alternatively it could be to keep their monopoly and prices high.

 

[Dr.Chau]

The only concern I have is whether it's setting a dangerous precedent.

Obviously in bigger humans with a bigger blood volume there is more room to make decisions, because the oxygen is completely depleted ... But in babies I think people get a bit emotional, nobody likes the idea of cutting up a baby, and if you think about it being done so soon after life support being switched off ... obviously there will be people against it.

I just hope it doesn't deter people from donating organs

I was once a man before I transformed
into this molester, freshly deceased children
You have born, torn by my rape
The dead are not safe, the lifeless child corpse
I will violate

Pleasure from the dead, complete satisfaction
I open the coffin
Sick thoughts run through my head as I stare
At the dead, over and over, I can't escape
I begin the dead sex, licking her young, rotted orifice
I cum in her cold cunt, shivering with ecstasy
for nine days straight I do the same
She becomes by dead, decayed child sex slave
her neck I hack, cutting through the back
I use her mouth to eject

Here I cum, blood gushes from
bleeding black blood
her head disconnected
As I came, viciously I cut, through her jugular vein
She's already dead, I masturbate with her severed head
My lubrication, her decomposition
Spending my life molesting dead children

Intercourse with infants
Curing heads on top of spikes
boiling skulls
Skin sliding off of bones

Voices
The voices call
Voices
The voices are calling me
Buried dead I've spiritually infected
Call to me from beyond their graves

Bleed
I now bleed pus
I bleed, the blood of the dead
I bleed on her livid skin
Thrusting myself within
Beginning to chop through her hairless crotch
Beyond what we know as death
It haunts me everyday
I hear the voice of every child
That lies next to me decayed
A fresh corpse, to fill with my infection
Tortured before death, no orifice left unfilled

Violated after death
Virgin hole I infest
Anal pore spewing cess
The sacred juice I injest
Your dead child I defile
Necropedophile


I don't think the composers of those lyrics feel bad about cutting up babies, in fact, they eat babies!

 

[katie tully]

What do you mean nobody likes the idea of cutting up a baby...

Your sir are an exception to every human rule.

 

[Dr.Chau]

Your sir are an exception to every human rule.

nah, look above.