The family of a college football player claims a North Carolina hospital let him die in order to harvest his organs.
Terrance Howard, aged 19, from Texas, was struck by a car after he got out of his own vehicle to check on others after a minor crash while driving to Salisbury, North Carolina.
While in the hospital room, family members recorded a live video on Facebook that has since been removed, showing the hospital calling the police on them while they were pleading with medical staff to save Howard’s life. An article in The Root on August 8 describes the video and includes a screenshot. There is also a partial video on X.
‘Lawsuit Waiting to Happen’
Most mainstream media publications do not mention the video or the family’s dispute over the cause of death, and the case of Terrance Howard is not very well documented, says Heidi Klessig M.D., a retired anesthesiologist, pain management specialist, author of The Brain Death Fallacy, and contributor to respectforhumanlife.com.
“It’s a lawsuit waiting to happen,” said Klessig. “As I was reading Terrance Howard’s case and about how abysmally the family was treated, I was thinking that this might be the test case, but I don’t know what his family is going to do. Someone should tell them. I think they should sue.”
Klessig says the public is unaware of the current debate on the topic of brain death among doctors, academics, lawyers, and philosophers. Potential organ donors must be kept alive (beating heart, circulation, and respiration) for their major organs to stay viable.
“Someone needs to be an advocate for the family, because all they ever hear is, ‘Be altruistic,’ ‘Give the gift of life,’ and they are not told that there is no moral, medical, or real certainty here,” said Klessig.
“The moral consent process is not there, and I think that’s unjust,” said Klessig.
Diagnostic Problem
The ability to make an accurate diagnosis of brain death is central to the issue, says Klessig.
“The problem with the way brain death is diagnosed is that the brain is tested by brain function,” said Klessig. “For instance, do you have certain reflexes that the brain usually has?”
The problem with testing brain function is that if the brain is in a “state of GIP” (global ischemic penumbra), a term doctors use to refer to that interval when the brain’s blood flow is between 20 and 50 percent of normal, the brain will not respond to neurological testing and has no electrical activity on EEG, but it still has enough blood flow to maintain tissue viability, meaning recovery is still possible, says Klessig.
“It could be perfectly viable—it’s just not functioning—so we really cannot with moral or medical certainty know that brain death means destruction,” said Klessig. “Because of GIP, there’s no way to know.”
Illegal Definition Change?
In its 2023 guidelines on brain death, the American Academy of Neurology (AAN) says physicians can declare a person brain dead even if partial brain function remains.
The new standard for doctors does not meet the legal standard, says Klessig.
“We need to study this because the Uniform Determination of Death Act says you have to have the irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain, including the brain stem, for a legal brain death diagnosis,” said Klessig.
Who Decides?
The Howard case is an example of current conflicts over who has the right to determine what happens to a patient’s organs on their death bed, says Quentin Brogdon, a personal injury trial attorney at Crain Brogdon, LLP, in Dallas, Texas.
“It seems intuitive that the person themselves, or their family, should have priority in those discussions and decisions,” said Brogdon. “I don’t know what happened in the case of Terrance Howard—I have not reviewed the video—but if the hospital deliberately accelerated his death in contravention strictly for the purpose of harvesting organs, then intuitively and legally that should be wrong, and the hospital should be held accountable.”
When death is inevitable, hospitals and other health care providers have a legitimate interest in trying to preserve the viability of those organs for use in saving other lives, if the family has consented or the person who is dying has done so, says Brogdon.
“It’s a horrible question that fortunately most of us never have to face, but hospitals, and people who are dying and their family members, have to confront it, and there are no easy answers,” said Brogdon.
Texas Takes Action
A bill introduced in Texas, SB 1040, by Texas State Sen. Lois Kolkhorst (R-Brenham), reflects a widening concern about organ harvesting and informed consent of the donor or family. The bill will prohibit health insurance coverage of transplants involving organs from countries known to engage in forced harvesting.
“The allegations in this case raise a disturbing question about whether consent was voluntary or whether consent was forced,” said Brogdon. “I don’t know enough to opine one way or another in this case, but we just need to always be mindful that if someone’s organs are harvested, then they or their family members have given meaningful consent for the harvesting of those organs.”
Kenneth Artz (KApublishing@gmx.com) writes from Tyler, Texas.