Court Orders Donation of Columbus Hit-and-Run Victim's Organs

ABC 6
COLUMBUS (Dana Jay) -- The victim of a fatal hit-and-run crash became an organ donor Wednesday after legal action by central Ohio’s organ procurement agency.

Lifeline of Ohio filed the suit in Franklin County Court against the parents of 21-year-old Elijah Smith and Ohio Health Corporation.

Chief clinical executive Dorrie Dils said the lawsuit was the first-of-its-kind in Ohio.

Smith was critically injured while riding his bike in the early morning hours of July 3. He was taken to Ohio Health’s Grant Medical Center.

The lawsuit states that on July 4, Smith’s physician declared him dead.

A spokeswoman for Lifeline of Ohio said a ventilator kept Smith's organs viable as the agency attempted to convince his family that he wanted them to be donated.

The lawsuit also maintains that because Smith was identified as an organ donor based on Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicle records, and had not subsequently expressed wishes to the contrary, his body was legally available to Lifeline of Ohio for organ and tissue procurement.

After learning that Smith signed an organ donation card, his parents, Rodney and Pamela Smith, sent a handwritten letter to the hospital stating, “We do not want our son to die like this. We do not want our son to be an organ donor.”
It is very important to remember that donor registries are legally binding requiring hospitals and organ recovery organizations to fulfill the wishes of the donor.  Please speak to your family about your wishes to be a donor and that you have registered as an organ, eye and tissue donor - do not put your family through unnecessary grief and legal battles; do not pit hospitals and recovery agencies with your family.
We honor the family of Elijah and express our heartfelt condolences and sympathy for the passing of their son.
______________________________________________________ 
"You have the power to SAVE lives." 
To register as a donor TODAY
In California: 
www.donateLIFEcalifornia.org | www.doneVIDAcalifornia.org 
Outside California: 
www.organdonor.gov | www.donatelife.net

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Heart transplant recipient celebrates graduation with donor’s mom

Image
A.J. Reyes, right, talks with Mary Knauer prior to a graduation ceremony for Samuel Merritt University nursing program students in Oakland, Calif. on Friday, May 26, 2017. Knauer's son was killed in a motorcycle crash in 2010 and Reyes received his heart in an organ transplant. (Kristopher Skinner/Bay Area News Group) At 25, AJ Reyes was suffering from congestive heart failure and running out of time. Unless the Vallejo resident got another organ to replace his damaged one, his doctors told him he would be dead within five years. Reyes went on the California Transplant Donor Network waiting list and in November of 2010, he got the call that he had been praying for. A strong, healthy heart had become available. But his joy was clouded by the knowledge that the news meant another family’s nightmare. Justin Olivera, a 40-year-old man from Willows, a small rural town in Northern California, had just been killed in a motorcycle accident. Olivera was an organ donor, and his heart...
Read more

The Kidney Crisis

Image
Hour Detroit Magazine | By Monica Mercer // Photographs by Josh Scott Myths about organ donation and transplantation are still contaminating the real issues behind a silent health problem Dr. Alan Koffron can conjure scene after scene from the medical TV genre where human kidneys have been integral to the plot: residents dropping them on the floor, crooked doctors profiting from organ trafficking, the wrong kidney placed in the wrong body. Kidney transplantation â€" the most commonly performed of all transplant procedures in the world â€" ranks high on the medical dramatics scale, Koffran says, but he’s not sure why. An organ transplantation surgeon with Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Koffron has performed thousands of kidney transplants. He and the other medical professionals involved in the process across the country know how heavily regulated it is in the United States, with checks and balances so strong that rarely does a kidney transplant involve any- thing remotely a...
Read more

Hawthorne woman's liver donation saves cousin, the 'big sister' she never had

Image
North Jersey | Lindy Washburn CARMINE GALASSO/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER Jennifer Carrino, left, and cousin Nina Walsh showing off their surgery scars. Nina donated a portion of her liver to her older cousin, likely saving her life. Over the last year, Jennifer Carrino had come back from the brink of death, survived internal bleeding and spent weeks in intensive care. Then came the hard part: asking her cousin for a part of her liver. In April, doctors told Jennifer that without a transplant she probably had a year to live. Jennifer, 37, was already on transplant waiting lists in two states, but it was going to take too long, they said. She needed to think about a living donor. Jennifer turned to her younger cousin, Nina Walsh, a slip of a woman with an outsized sense of generosity. She asked her to consider giving up part of her healthy liver. The procedure, pioneered 20 years ago, pushes the ethical boundaries of medicine because it goes against a basic tenet of medicine to “first do no ha...
Read more