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Fri Dec 22 12:30:49 GMT 2006

DB,

Please define brain-dead in your humane world.  As the case was
presented, the patient (supposedly) had  injuries ON A CT that were
incompatible with survival.  Rebecca cited an anecdotal case of same,
but put another face on the patient - the CT was not really what it was
read to be by the 1st year radiology resident on call that night.

As I said before, unless the patient that you refer to was clinically
declared brain dead with serial exams in the absence of confounding
medications, hypothermia, acidosis, etc, or unless (as I think was said
by Ben Reynolds) the patient had no flow on a 4 vessel angiogram prior
to bleeding into his/her abdomen, then that patient's surgeon was
obligated to operate on the abdominal bleed.  As you would be obliged to
do; and that would be the humane thing to do.

Ron

>>> <bensonblues at comcast.net> 12/21/2006 10:01 PM >>>
Dean,
Have we lost our humanity, or just our minds? It is insane to operate
on a brain dead human being. In my humble opinion, those who criticized
the surgeon for not operating are clearly out of their minds. The
problem that we have, in my view, is that we don't know how to handle
our technology. THINK: This could be you, tied to a chair with a
tracheostomy, percutaneous feeding tube, and foley catheter. Does this
make any sense to anybody?
DB
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