MASHCan ~~2012~~

A Cyberspace "Two Cents" Against the Brain Death Deceit, Organ Donor Typecasting and Manipulated Family Consent

The loss of a few brain cells, or even brain herniation, is not death. Being hooked up to life support keeps alive all one's senses. So the question must be asked how does it feel to be trapped by a head injury and hear doctors telling your family you are dead? How does it feel to be wheeled away and stripped of your living body parts as your actual cause of death? Could there be any worse mental and physical agony? Is donating one's organs noble and heroic or just plain stupid?

"In my coma I could hear doctors telling my family I was dead. It made me mad inside." Zack Dunlap, organ donor escapee.

"A comatose patient's ability to process should always be considered, I think, by physicians at the bedside of such patients with regard to what is being said, and with regard to both positive and negative things that may be discussed in the presence of the patient who may be able to process some of what is being said [sic]." Dr Richard Wennberg, Krembil Neuroscience Centre, Toronto Western Hospital.** CBC News, November 2011

** Ironically, this doctor was the subject of a lawsuit in 2005 for his part in denying a young man in a coma any treatment or painkilling drugs whatsoever while his brain swelled to eventually kill him. It is alleged that this harm was purposely inflicted in order to reduce the patient to organ donor status and the point to which his family could be approached for a DNR. The denial of painkilling medication is perpetrated to fool the family into thinking the patient has no pain and is therefore recovering. The doctor will feign surprise when the patient's condition becomes terminal, or said to be terminal. The cause of action was False Imprisonment since the patient asked and repeatedly tried to leave the hospital when he sensed foul play. The patient was deceived into staying and lost his life as a result. The difference between Dr Wennberg's public statements and actual practices is disturbing.

"I realize that you may not be following this story any more but still I have to respond, I have DOCUMENTED cases where someone was declared “brain dead” only to fully recover later. If you had read the earlier posts you would have read that. I can back up what I say. Thankfully in those cases someone noticed the “brain dead” person moved, but how many cases are there where the drugs to paralyze muscle contraction were already given? Then what would happen? I can tell you what would happen, the doctors will cut out the organs they want, shut off life support and they kill the person. I hate to be blunt but is the truth, I can prove what I say is true. It’s not a friend of a friend who knows someone, it’s fully documented. Sorry but given the pressure of organ donation, and given the documented cases, doctors have to kill to get the organs." Posted by: rwee2000 1/28/10 (ABC News, Comments on Greg Jacobs)

Detection of potential donors is the starting point for transplantation. This is probably the most difficult transplant activity to subject to standard protocols [i.e.hospitals cannot openly select people to kill for organs. They do so secretly and justify the deception and false imprisonment as a service to mitigate grief, disabled living and family burden]. The only way to ensure that potential donors are not missed is to have a means of identifying and monitoring individual potential donors within donor pools in relevant hospitals or geographical areas [i.e. where transplant facilities are close by and the general population in that area is culturally motivated to look merciful]. Guide to Safety and Quality Assurance for Organs, Tissues and Cells (2nd edition)

"In medicine, we have a tenet that you must do no harm and yet, in the worst moment of people’s lives, they may have doctors and nurses approaching them to consider allowing us to remove their loved ones’ organs. It’s a horrible situation and I have always wondered if we are compounding their grief and even causing post-traumatic stress disorder,” said Dr Eric Yoshida, head of gastroenterology at VGH and UBC.Vancouver Sun, Aug. 5, 2008

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is not to be confused with the subjective emotional trauma which occurs after one experiences a car crash or fire. PTSD is objective and unique to people who witness the suffering and death of a loved one (or fellow member of a military unit etc) where blind trust is placed in experts or leaders. PTSD occurs when trust in an expert or leader is ill-placed and people die needlessly. PTSD can occur in organ donation situations since family members are intentionally misled by medical professionals about brain injury. Family members realize later that they could have stopped the entrapment, suffering and death of their loved one at the hands of doctors if only they had known. Their loved one dies not from his brain injury (which can be reversed with quick and well-intentioned treatment) but through intentional delay and medical tampering to prevent or hide improvement in the patient's condition. The brain injured person's body is seen only as a place where his organs are prepared and maintained for optimal transplant into another waiting person. The act of preparing and removing organs requires that the donor be alive. The deceit required to procure the organs means the potential donor will be paralysed so he cannot express the incredible pain of his swelling brain to his family. Organ donation is therefore torturous and fatal to the donor. It is crucial to be fully informed about every aspect of the lucrative donor business.

People who get Tumefactive Multiple Sclerosis must be on their guard. They might be at increased risk for medical tampering since their lesions are big and called "mysterious." Valuable time is lost to the patient if doctors maintain they aren't sure what the lesion is. Brain injured or brain ill patients are the main source of organs for transplant. It appears there is not as much medical incentive to save their lives as to seize their organs.

Introduction

THE INTERNET IS A USEFUL research tool in terms of its content and interactive dynamic. Our website has taken advantage of this resource over the last 5 years to explore the nasty facts behind the procurement of body parts for transplant in First World countries such as Canada. How does organ procurement work here? Regardless of the niceties which promote it as "donation," and a donor as brain "dead," is this practice really any different from organ procurement in places where there are no expensive advertizing campaigns to dress it up? Is the only difference one of presentation?

We recommend that others avail themselves of the array of information over the Internet to undertake their own research into the realities of organ donation, brain death and patient-as-probable-donor targeting (PPDT) in Canada, USA, UK, Australia etc. Research however does not mean copying other people's work or impersonating their websites. Please read MASHCan's copyright at the bottom of this page.

Presenting the "nay" side to organ harvesting is a lot of work. The medical industry uses every possible manipulation to promote this procedure as positive despite the doubts and guesses that accompany it. For families who are uneasy about organ donation and the excuse it provides for taking the lives of brain injured patients, there is therefore a lot of untangling to do. Anyone taking on the task is also subject to insult and sabotage. Where dismembering live bodies was once taboo, the practice is now marketed by the medical industry as a way for a loved one "to live on," or an antidote to the grieving process. This massive leap calls for closer inspection.

With this in mind, please note that it is not in our interest or that of our intended audience to clutter our message with old content. We refine our content on a continual basis and have no problem discarding material which has already played its part in our task. There is no contact address for this site. As is common on "activist" or opinion sites we have had too many problems with uncalled-for submissions.

IT IS OUR OPINION THAT all brain injured/ill patients or their families must be clearly and routinely asked as part of admission to a hospital -- and at the very outset -- what their preferences are now that brain injury has entered their lives. The present practice whereby hospitals silently typecast which neurological patients they can worsen and kill for their organs is shocking.

Patients and their families must be told at the outset if the hospital they have come to is a designated hospital for organ donation and transplant. The Toronto Western Hospital is one such centre. Protocol at designated hospitals sets up brain injured or brain ill patients to be secretly assessed as possible donors* based on their level of education and belief structure. Candidates (normally university educated and "progressive") will not receive care to save their lives but rather, kept as a container for their living organs until such time as family members fall for the doctor's claim that their loved one has a damaged brain and is "dead." The patient suffers terribly as the pain of his swelling brain is concealed with paralytics (e.g. haldol) but which do nothing to alleviate it. He is anything but dead but cannot express to his family what is really going on.

At present no mention is made of these issues at the hospital admissions desk. Related questions are routine however, such as which kind of priest should be called in the event of bad news. The topic of organ donation is specifically avoided at this time because it might cause families to be a little more on their guard and ask questions as to the treatment being given their loved one. Instead, the issue of organ recycling is slipped in with nice words and hinted at persuasively until the patient looks dead enough for doctors to strike directly. Most of the work has already been done by means of advertizing to wannabee heroes. It's just a question of the targeted family being nudged over the edge when they are most susceptible to the "good cause" spiel.

It's frightening to consider that in the current climate of manipulated organ donation most brain injury actually occurs in a hospital. This harm is fresh and easily inflicted by medical staff to make a selected victim appear hopeless, terminal, vegetative or dead rather than working for his survival and rehabilitation. This practice amounts to false imprisonment, fraud, torture and homicide. Doesn't this misuse of public trust make organ "donation" worse than unfair death elsewhere? Isn't this kind of denial just too high a price to pay for avoiding the grieving process?

* Detection of potential donors is the starting point for transplantation. This is probably the most difficult transplant activity to subject to standard protocols. The only way to ensure that potential donors are not missed is to have a means of identifying and monitoring individual potential donors within donor pools in relevant hospitals or geographical areas. Guide to Safety and Quality Assurance for Organs, Tissues and Cells (2nd edition)

HOSPITALS TYPICALLY ORGAN-SPOT on the basis of family appearance and behaviour-type. These profiles indicate who is more susceptible to the hospital's psychological games leading to consent for DNR or palliative care, organ donation and autopsy.

These games can include: agreement for a psychiatric assessment called "a compromise" in the medical notes if the patient is alone. The assessment won't happen but the patient is denied care for 24 hours during which time he is sedated and his brain swells more than if he hadn't come to the hospital in the first place.

If the patient is with his family, there can be tasteful waits; pretense at care for injury; pretense at hope and then reports of sudden and unexpected changes; intentionally increasing the level of head pain for a conscious patient so that his request for relief can be called "patient agreement to palliative care" by doctors. After coma or sedation of the patient, organ donation is presented to the family as a privilege; donation as a given; donation as confirmation that the donor and his family made the grade; donation as a compliment to the family's intelligence and their particular social and religious values; charging or not charging a family for donating organs.

Phony waits for the organ procurement agent can occur or the "unavailability" of a transplant surgeon. These ruses increase the impression that taking out a loved one's organs is done as a huge favour to the family. Sometimes phony fears are expressed that the loved one's organs might not be good enough. This tactic increases the family's desire to be accepted. There are claims that harvesting scars on the deceased were the result of autopsy; claims that autopsy should be done because the hospital cares about cause of death; a few well-publicized pro bono court cases used to give the impression that mistakes are rare.

The latest addition to this list presents itself as "research into the abilities of a vegetative person" (e.g. Dr Adrian Owen). It is the opinion of this site that such a campaign is intended to propagate the impression that all brain injury amounts to vegetative and to scare families with the level of care required if they don't choose organ donation -- care that research is apparently trying to make easier for these unlucky and burdened families.

The fact is that most organ donors go to the gutting table well above vegetative and would certainly be able to use Dr Owen's communication devices to express their terror and unwillingness if given the chance.

IT IS URGENT THAT organ donation protocols be changed so that either the admissions clerk asks the donation question, or the family states their position before a treatment plan is decided for the patient. There are two treatment plans: 1) a plan for disposal or death-by-donation in which doctors forgo the head-injured patient's survival from the outset in favour of organ optimization and readiness for transplant, 2) a plan where the patient will be treated for the pressure building in his brain and his life (although disabled to an extent) easily saved. These treatments conflict with each other so the facts must be made known without incurring the sizeable harm caused by waits.

At the present time, death by organ donation is vigorously encouraged by every means possible except by direct question when a person is actually ill or hurt and arrives at the hospital. In avoiding the organ donation issue at admission, the hospital staff is able to give the impression that sacrifing the patient is the furthest thing from their minds. Families simply do not know what is afoot as their loved one appears to be admitted, prepped and tested to save his life. Valuable time is lost in this unspoken zone, and the patient is irrevocably harmed while the gamble winds down.

THE PURPOSE OF THIS SITE is to speak for the wrongly arrested or falsely imprisoned donor or probable donor. There is no doubt he, alone and by himself, knows exactly what is afoot but is hopelessly paralysed from doing anything about it.

The continued slide on this issue indicates that a new norm (or ethic) for the brain injured is being established. It suggests a medical industry ideal that organ quality and removal for transplant be the default treatment for run-of-the-mill brain injury victims. However, the public has to first be implicated in the scheme through its own ignorance, blind trust, malleability, confusion and kneejerk notions of mercy or modern convenience.

With the public majority convinced that hospitals are good places, the practice will continue full speed ahead under the banner of majority taste with only clear exceptions spared. All in all, this chain of events is repeated until it enters the realm of public interest or more correctly, popular culture. Public interest then gives birth to an "ethic" which suits a particular lobby at the time.

We understand that the anti-donation message is difficult to take for those who want an organ transplant. However, there are two sides to this issue and both should be readily available.

WE SUGGEST FURTHER that consumers work to prevent their need for organ transplants. Smoking, drinking, drug medications, unhealthy food, lack of exercise and bad birthing practices cause most organ failure. It is very easy to give up these habits in order to save your life and the life of your trapped and tortured donor. The lives of the brain-injured should not be sacrificed so that fast food companies and the like, can succeed.

Our website disclaims any commitment to other medical activist sites or apparently medical activist sites unless our support is specifically stated by us in the green box below. This site is not religious or of the 'pro-life' genre. This site calls for transparency and informed individual choice.

Outside use of MASHCan text is unauthorized. All rights are reserved. MASHCan copyright covers its current text as well as any archived, discarded or past material whatsoever. Please do not use it for you own purposes.

For medical opinions on the dangers of organ donation and transplant please consult the following links:

Feature

Organ Donation: Is it truth or deceit? Can't be both. If we don't know for sure, it must be deceit.

According to Confucian principles for example, a living person who suffers physical dismemberment will not die well. Known as "lingchi" to the Chinese, living physical dismemberment is a form of torture designed to specifically insult a victim by slowly and deliberately slicing his body. Bleeding is controlled so that he cannot die quickly.

The same languishment is true for someone on a breathing tube while his living organs are removed. In both cases, the victim will acutely feel the invasion of his being and a complete loss of control over his body, identity and/or soul. This sensation is felt no matter how ill the patient. As long as life is supported, a body's fear reflexes remain intact. Survival is the most basic of all human urgencies, meaning that at no time can a person become a battery-powered toy.

The ancient punishment of lingchi was contrived specifically to keep a victim away from sensing the climax of his life's end. The victim's last remaining right of passage i.e. when to die, is in someone else's hands. This particular moment in one's life occurs when, upon deciding there is no more hope for earthly survival, one autonomously relies upon one's soul (or untapped self) to relieve the terror of being so small and lonely.

The comfort and ecstacy which this built-in act of SELF affords is one's last, and perhaps enduring sensation. In his state of fragmented death, the victim cannot assess the meaning and value of his life. A teased death is the supreme insult against the Self.

The lingchi torture will remove the natural comfort provided in the normal body/psyche dying process to the extent that not even death can bring peace. In the throes of lingchi, the terror of death is never relieved, nor does the end of one's life become the deeply private affair it is meant to be. Put another way, the impetus to let go which nature provides is denied because an integral (fully-equipped) body is required for this surge of independence to take place.

IN TERMS OF THE PROCESS ITSELF, there is little difference between lingchi and harvesting organs in Western hospitals. Yet in one case the act is seen as horrific and in another, as heroic. Which is it? Is one right and the other wrong? Are both wrong? They can't both be right because that would simply shift the issue under the rug as tolerance of beliefs. However something as real as cutting into living flesh cannot be blurred on the flimsy basis that the dead can't talk or that we don't know what organ dismemberment or a "soul-less afterlife" feels like.

Even if we aren't sure of pain or souls, it is crucial not to deny the part we can be sure about. It is a fact that when someone is flayed for organs they are still alive and react defensively to the attack upon them. In Ruben Navarro's case, the young man's active resistance to the procedure became the harvesting surgeon's defense for further incapacitating Ruben. It is a medical fact that removing living organs, along with pain and indignity, is the host's cause of death. The head injury which brought a patient to the hospital becomes a secondary issue and exploited to get him to the donor stage as quickly as possible.

In terms of what actually takes place from start to finish, organ removal and the intentional disregard of the patient's true needs is a violent death. How it feels to be imprisoned and flayed for organs is the starting point in this issue, not how the injured person stacks up in the human worth department.

If you have signed an organ donor card or would say yes to having your relative's organs harvested, are you comfortable with the information you have been given through the advertizing medium? Do you wish to examine the medical facts of this procedure rather than settle for how good it will make you look to others if you agree to it?

Did you know that the term "brain death" can be misused as "death" by doctors interested in procuring organs? The same is true for choosing the term "vegetative" over "disabled." Actual brain death and body death only occur after a patient has had several strokes and four or five herniations including the brain stem. This degree of damage is rare and, if it occurs in a hospital, is usually the result of intentional harm by doctors.

The loss of brain cells in one part of the brain -- which is the case for many patients --is neither brain death nor vegetative. As a crisis pressure by doctors, these terms scare susceptible people into agreeing to organ donation out of sheer ignorance and deception.

The plastic surgery term "realistic expectations" as well as the Coroner's term "incompatible with life" have also been borrowed for the purpose. In the case of Gregory Jacobs, Ohio, Dr James Pepicello defended the hospital's disembowelment of the still-living Greg with these terms. The doctor put forward his judgement that Greg's family was the type that did not realize that Greg would never fully recover, and that in Greg's world, Greg would feel like a misfit. This defence is contrived as damage control for the hospital and organ industry. Most people if asked, choose life over death and adjust.

Getting a family to donate or agree to an autopsy can be a loose end by which the hospital clears itself of wrongdoing. A yes to either of these legally shifts the blame to the family for the death and removal of organs.

In legal terms, organ donation is marketed as a medical service by which to "reduce the impact of grief by doing something good." In reality however, one is able more to assuage the toll of grief if one allows a loved one the natural dying process with appropriate palliation and loving support. Natural death, which is likely also spiritual, can be achieved by removing life support from an intact person and allowing him to shut down on his own terms. Despite insinuations to the contrary, organ donation is not synonymous with the removal of life support and the termination of suffering. At the point where life support becomes a heroic measure it can be refused per se without organ donation ever coming into it.

Unless the hospital's targeting process is interrupted by a medically savvy family member; one who is unaffected by advertizing and bold enough to check on the treatment decision, the secret PPDT will continue. It is crucial not to go to a hospital alone. It's also crucial to die in your family's arms so they can witness your death, making sure your organs die as well.

The hospital's lead time over the family is usually 33 hours. Therefore at the time of formalizing the removal of his organs with family agreement, the target himself is very trapped and very sedated against protesting his fate. He is likely also suffering indescribable pain since his condition is typically created, denied, untreated and concealed by means of paralysing drugs. These strait-jacket drugs do not numb thought, terror and physical pain. Nor does a coma.

IN THOSE ALL TOO FREQUENT CASES where a conscious target is specifically induced by his doctors to have high intracranial pressure (ICP) along with seizure and coma, the target is not given painkillers in case questions are asked why he is in pain, and why nothing is being done to help him. ** His nausea will be concealed by means of a naso-gastric tube. The use of this tool should always be questioned by concerned family members. Nausea is an all important symptom of high ICP and must not be ignored.**

In cases where a family does notice that something is wrong and the secret path to organ harvesting in danger of being disclosed, the patient is quickly saved and the hospital will cover itself by calling the event a "medical miracle." The actual miracle is that the family was prepared to ask questions.

To round off the edges of a cruel and reckless practice, organ donation, by the time it gets to be called that, is portrayed as something doctors disagree with but which they do in response to public demand or majority consensus in a particular country. Medical ethicists are employed to juggle these slick protections into place so that the hospital and doctors cannot be successfully sued for harming patients and removing their organs. The family is to blame.

To avoid becoming a gambling chip in the donor stakes, it is crucial to state upon admission to a hospital that you or your loved one is not an organ donor and both have realistic expectations about survival as a brain injured person. If not, the assumption could be made by the hospital that your silence implies your own "wink-wink, nod-nod" wish to be rid of a brain injured relative in a trendy, grief-free way.

Naive and gullible families make it possible in Canada and similar countries, for hospitals to procure organs as a way to feel better about the death. At the same time, grief is portrayed by popular culture as an illness or nuisance rather than embrace it as a natural part of personal growth.

The only difference between lingchi and "donation" is that lingchi is accurately described. Lingchi is a gruesome deterrent against treason. As such, people avoid it. By the same token if the public was warned that head injuries resulting from car accidents, sports and gunshots would lead to lingchi, they would make sure they did not hurt themselves. They would also educate themselves on brain injury, treatment, survival and the truth about organ donation.

Are you a target? Could you be mistaken for a target? Who promotes the organ donation hoax? How is the deception carried out in hospitals? Is organ harvesting purely medical or is it a form of punishment? Is it anti-spirit? Did you know that the recipient of your organs is not always someone who urgently needs a transplant? How deceptive is the practice known as organ donation? How financially lucrative are your organs to the transplant industry? These questions may be answered by clicking on the links provided in the green box above.