Girl Declared Dead Gives Doctors a Thumbs Up Before They Can Harvest Her Organs

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You have most likely heard about the shooting in Kalamazoo, Michigan, in which a crazy Uber driver drove around town randomly shooting people. Six people were killed in the senseless attacks. One person who wasn't killed, but nearly died anyway was a 14 year old girl named Abigail Kopf. Doctors called her family for permission to remove organs, even though they had managed to get her heart beating again. While her mother was saying final goodbyes, Abigail squeezed her mother's hand. She also responded to the doctor when he asked if he could hear him by giving him a thumbs up sign. At that point, they started treating her as a patient instead of an organ donor. I read about Abigail yesterday and this morning while looking for the article I read, I discovered a slew of news articles about people waking up and becoming alert just before doctors harvested their organs. I was a bit disheartened to see how often this happens. And it worries me because the best organs come from bodies that are not yet dead. Death causes damage to organs. Doctors keep organs in good condition for transplant by giving patients drugs that thin the blood - heparin, for example. These drugs are not meant to restore the patient, just to keep the organs healthy. If you have internal injuries, the last thing you want is a blood thinner. It worries me that patients are so often being declared dead or irreversibly injured so quickly because of the demand for healthy organs for transplant. I don't begrudge anyone a new heart or liver to save a life, as long as it doesn't cost someone else his life. Or my life. This is why my feelings towards being an organ donor are ambivalent. When I go to the hospital, I want to be the most important person the doctor attending me is thinking about. I don't want him to be assessing the number of organs I might donate because it might influence his decisions about just when my life ends. Are you an organ donor? Do you feel that it's possible that sometimes doctors make these pronouncements of death a bit prematurely? Do you think the possibility of organ harvesting and the need to do that quickly can influence how much effort is put into saving the patient's life? http://www.cbsnews.com/news/kalamazoo-shooting-abigail-kopf-14-strong-willed-survivor/ Image from Pixabay Free Images