Remember when science fiction was just that?... Fiction? Those innocent days are long long gone, and here we are today.
The future is now, and what was once fiction is becoming all too commonplace. These are not the motorized killing vans used in China to harvest parts from Fallon Gong prisoners en route to hospital or plane. However, no matter how well they think this is planned, there are so many many loopholes here to allow things to go very wrong.
December 3, 2010
The City of New York recently launched a new emergency services pilot program that seems more like something out of a science fiction movie than a real-life initiative. According to a recent New York Times report, the city has begun deploying two emergency ambulances in response to 911 calls.
The City of New York recently launched a new emergency services pilot program that seems more like something out of a science fiction movie than a real-life initiative. According to a recent New York Times report, the city has begun deploying two emergency ambulances in response to 911 calls.
The first one will try to save the patient’s life. The second one will harvest their vital organs should the rescue efforts fail or be deemed likely to fail, in case the first ambulance fails. The city's new ambulances, emblazoned with the words "Organ Preservation Unit" (OPU), currently trail behind primary rescue vehicles headed to situations where there could be valuable organs involved.
After months of grappling with the ethical and legal implications, New York City medical officials are beginning to test this system that they hope will one day greatly increase the number of organs collected for transplant.
Only kidneys will be recovered in the pilot program. Last year, more than 4,650 people in the U.S. died while awaiting a kidney ~ accounting for 70 percent of deaths on the transplant list, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing.
City officials insist that the whole procedure is perfectly ethical because the first rescue vehicle is unaware that the second one is there until a supervisor decides to stop the rescue efforts and make the announcement, which allegedly eliminates the possibility that rescuers will purposely allow a victim to die in order to gain access to the valuable organs.
The New York City Fire Department's Organ Preservation Unit will be staffed with personnel trained to get a donor family's consent, perform medical procedures necessary to keep the donor organ viable, as well as transport the donor to the hospital to harvest the organs for transplant.
They say there are not enough organs available for those in need, and that targeting emergency situations where people with usable organs are likely to die could result in a significant boost of available organs. For five months, the city will deploy a specially trained team that will monitor 911 calls for people who may be in danger of dying, like those having a heart attack.
If efforts to resuscitate the patient fail, the team will quickly move in and try to save the kidneys; normally, patients who die outside hospitals cannot be donors because if too much time passes after the heart stops beating, the organs are unusable.
City officials said the project would be the first of its kind in the United States, though similar operations have been carried out in Europe. They said that they believed they had solved any ethical problems by adopting what they called very conservative standards for who would qualify as a donor.
The trial, which is being financed with a $1.5 million federal grant, is limited: to most areas of Manhattan, to the hours of 4 p.m. to midnight, to adults between 18 and 60, and to people who die of cardiac arrest at home or another residence.
To satisfy concerns that evidence of a crime could be destroyed in the harvesting process, a police detective sergeant would go to the home to be sure that there had been no foul play.
Officials said they would not harvest organs from anybody who had been involved in a crime scene, whether a poisoning or stabbing or shooting. Dr. Lewis Goldfrank, director of emergency services at Bellevue Hospital Center, a city hospital, said that in a case of foul play, he thought it “highly unlikely there will be a loved one or authorized person in the room calling in to 911 and still staying there” when the police and organ preservation team arrived.
The pilot program team has been told they have 50 minutes from the time a person's heart stops beating to the time his or her body must be placed in the ambulance and hooked up to a machine that creates blood circulation. Once at Bellevue, another machine will increase body oxygen.
Dr. Goldfrank, director of emergency services at Bellevue Hospital Center in New York, said that he would like to see the program expanded to other types of deaths, perhaps even from car crashes or homicides, but that at this point, government agencies were reluctant to allow that.
If someone dies at home, the team will have roughly 20 minutes to start preservation procedures. Here, an Organ Preservation Specialist demonstrates how a donor would be handled inside the new mobile unit.
"If we prove that you can take the body and successfully do this, [expanding the program] will be the next step," explained Dr.Goldfrank.
Dr. Goldfrank said that he hoped there would be at least one case during the December-to-May trial period that would end with a transplant. But he and other officials said that even if no organs were transplanted, what they really wanted to test was the protocol, which required a delicate balance of treatment and consent.
In 2009, about 7,600 people were waiting for an organ transplant in the greater New York City area, but there were only 285 deceased organ donors that year, according to the New York Organ Donor Network.
Similar programs are already in place in France and Spain, where there are fewer barriers because people in those countries are considered organ donors unless they opt out, Goldfrank said. In order to become a donor in U.S. hospitals, a person must have joined a government registry ~ in New York state it's almost always done through the DMV ~ or family must consent to the procedure. The Manhattan pilot program requires both registration and family consent.
Regferences:
City to Deploy Ambulances to Save Organs
My EXTERNAL look says: It is a good plan provided that the consent of the dead person has been obtained in advance, or his/her direct family.
ReplyDeleteBUT I smell sneakiness and stinkness - "slightly open the door for now" -, and then once one foot is inside the room, do whatever you like.
Connecting the dots: Then and only then the Jewish rabbis who harvested human organs and laundered money will be hailed as SAINTS.
BINGO! Well put and 100% agreed upon. Remember the good old days when you were dead you were dead and got buried or cremated? Or put up on a platform to feed the birds?
ReplyDeleteWhen did this get so complicated? Once the rabbis got involved......