News Briefs: DA in hockey dad case blocked heart donation
News Briefs: DA in hockey dad case blocked heart donation
The family of Michael Costin, the Massachusetts man who died after being knocked unconscious in a fight at a hockey rink in July 2000, had wanted to donate his heart, but was prevented from doing so by the district attorney prosecuting the man accused of causing Costin’s death.
According to a report in the Jan. 25, 2002 Boston Globe, Middlesex District Attorney Martha Cloakley blocked the donation of Costin’s heart after he was declared brain dead because she wanted to prevent any possibility that the defendant’s lawyer might contend that Costin died of a pre-existing heart condition rather than the beating.
Surgeons express dismay
Transplant surgeons have expressed dismay that the organ was withheld, saying that doctors would not have accepted an organ that was not healthy and that there was ample evidence to indicate that Costin’s death was caused by brain swelling brought on by internal bleeding.
"With heart transplants, it’s literally a life-or-death situation," Lachlan Furrow, a general internist and director of the ethics program at Boston-based Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, told the newspaper. "It’s very, very likely that, because of this decision, someone with heart disease died. I think it’s tragic."
But some ethicists said the interests of justice should hold equal value with that of saving lives.
"There’s an obvious value in saving lives using donated organs," argues Ronald Munson, professor of philosophy and science and medicine at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. "But there is also the interest in making sure we have all the evidence necessary so that justice is served. As useful as it is to have these organs for donation, indeed to save lives, we may have to make an exception here to let justice be done, realizing the price we are paying."
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