Do Some Hospitals Prematurely End Life for Transplant Organs?

(By Heidi Klessig, MD on LifeSiteNews) — In 2021, a supposedly brain dead man, Anthony Thomas “TJ” Hoover II, opened his eyes and looked around while being wheeled to the operating room to donate his organs. Hospital staff at Baptist Health hospital in Richmond, Kentucky assured his family that these were just “reflexes.”

But organ preservationist Natasha Miller also thought Hoover looked alive. “He was moving around – thrashing around on the bed,” said Miller in an NPR interview. “And you could see he had tears coming down. He was visibly crying.”

“Everybody’s worst nightmare”

The organ retrieval was ultimately canceled. But some Kentucky Organ Donor Affiliates (KODA) workers say they later quit over the October 2021 incident, including another organ preservationist, Nyckoletta Martin.

“I’ve dedicated my entire life to organ donation and transplant. It’s very scary to me now that these things are allowed to happen and there’s not more in place to protect donors,” says Martin.

“That’s everybody’s worst nightmare, right? Being alive during surgery and knowing that someone is going to cut you open and take your body parts out?” Martin says. “That’s horrifying.”

Thankfully, in this case, Hoover was able to recover and even dance at his sister’s wedding this past summer.

Last month, this case was brought before a U.S. House subcommittee investigating organ procurement organizations. Whistleblowers claimed that —even after two doctors refused to remove Hoover’s organs— Kentucky Organ Donor Affiliates (KODA) ordered their staff to find another doctor to perform the surgery knowing he was awake inside.

Because brain death is a social construct and not death itself, I can tell you exactly how many “brain dead” patients are still alive: all of them.

When brain death was first proposed by an ad hoc committee at Harvard Medical School in 1968, the committee admitted that these people are not dead, but rather “desperately injured.” They thought that these neurologically injured people were a burden to themselves and others, and that society would be better served if we redefined them as being “dead.”

Since brain dead people are not dead, it’s not surprising that the only multi-center, prospective study of brain death found that the majority of brains from “brain dead” people were not severely damaged at autopsy – and 10 actually looked normal. Dr. Gaetano Molinari, one of the study’s principal investigators, wrote:

“Does a fatal prognosis permit the physician to pronounce death? It is highly doubtful whether such glib euphemisms as “he’s practically dead,” … “he can’t survive,” … “he has no chance of recovery anyway,” will ever be acceptable legally or morally as a pronouncement that death has occurred.”

But history shows that despite Dr. Molinari’s doubts, “brain death” went on to be widely accepted as death per se. Brain death was enshrined into US law in 1981 under the Uniform Determination of Death Act (UDDA).

Acceptance of this law has allowed neurologically disabled people to be redefined as “dead” and used as organ donors.

(Related: Did you know that the only thing a doctor has to do to start conducting lab rat-like experiments on still-alive registered organ donors is to declare them “brain dead.”)

Organ Donors Don’t Get Anesthesia For Pain

Unfortunately, most of these people do not wake up in time like TJ Hoover. They suffer death through the harvesting of their organs, a procedure often performed without the benefit of anesthesia. (As an OR RN in the 70s and 80s, I can verify this from the 4 or 5 donor harvests where I was the circulating nurse. ~Jacque)

26 minutes of insightful Q & A at the Spring HALO Voice conference in Minnesota in 2022:

Happily, some do manage to avoid becoming organ donors and go on to receive proper medical treatment:

In 1985, Jennifer Hamann was thrown into a coma after being given a prescription that was incompatible with her epilepsy medication. She could not move or sign that she was awake and aware when she overheard doctors saying that her husband was being “completely unreasonable” because he would not donate her organs. She went on to made a complete recovery and became a registered nurse.

Zack Dunlap was declared brain dead in 2007 following an ATV accident. Even though his cousin demonstrated that Zack reacted to pain, hospital staff told his family that it was just “reflexes.” But as Zack’s reactions became more vigorous, the staff took more notice and called off the organ harvesting team that was just landing via helicopter to take Zack’s organs. Today, Zack leads a fully recovered life.

Colleen Burns was diagnosed “brain dead” after a drug overdose, but wasn’t given adequate testing and awoke on the operating table just minutes before her organ harvesting surgery. Because the Burns family declined to sue, the hospital only received a slap on the wrist: the State Health Department fined St. Joseph’s Hospital Health Center in Syracuse, New York, just $6,000.

In 2015, George Pickering III was declared brain dead, but his father thought doctors were moving too fast. Armed and dangerous, he held off a SWAT team for three hours, during which time his son began to squeeze his hand on command. “There was a law broken, but it was broken for all the right reasons. I’m here now because of it,” said George III.

Trenton McKinley, a 13-year-old boy, suffered a head injury in 2018 but regained consciousness after his parents signed paperwork to donate his organs. His mother told CBS News that signing the consent to donate organs allowed doctors to continue Trenton’s intensive care treatment, ultimately giving him time to wake up.

Doctors often say that cases like these prove nothing, and that they are obviously the result of misdiagnosis and medical mistakes. But since all these people were about to become organ donors regardless of whether their diagnoses were correct, I doubt they find the “mistake” excuse comforting.

“This doesn’t seem to be a one-off, a bad apple,” says Greg Segal, who runs Organize, an organ transplant system watchdog group. “I receive allegations like that with alarming regularity.”

READ: Woman with no brainwave activity wakes up after hearing her daughter’s voice

“Brain death” is not death because the brain death concept does not reflect the reality of the phenomenon of death. Therefore, any guideline for its diagnosis will have no basis in scientific facts. People declared brain dead are neurologically disabled, but they are still alive.

“Brain dead” organ donation is a concealed form of euthanasia. ~Heidi Klessig MD

Think before designating yourself as an organ donor on your license

“While the UDDA requires ‘cessation of all functions of the entire brain, including the brainstem’ for a diagnosis of ‘brain death,’ doctors now generally follow the 2010 American Academy of Neurology Guidelines, which require only documentation of coma, a bedside test of brainstem reflexes and an apnea test,” Klessig writes about the Uniform Determination of Death Act.

“No other special studies of ‘the entire brain’ are required.”

New Jersey is the only state that allow families to demand treatment for patients declared “brain dead” according to the Uniform Declaration of Death Act. Patients and families can take measures before a crisis to make sure hospitals do not violate their wishes when it comes to life and death issues. For more information, see respectforhumanlife.org

Heidi Klessig MD is a retired anesthesiologist and pain management specialist who writes and speaks on the ethics of organ harvesting and transplantation. She is the author of “The Brain Death Fallacy” and her work may be found at respectforhumanlife.com.

***For the Full Spike Protein Protocol to protect from transmission from the “V” and to help those who took the “V”, go here.

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