Courts: Your Organs Belong To The Government
SEATTLE -- If you marked "organ donation" on your driver's license, you may have given consent for something you can't imagine.
Over the past year, KIRO Team 7 Investigators have repeatedly exposed how the King County Medical Examiner’s Office traded hundreds of human brains to a research lab, collecting $1.5 million along the way. Dozens of families say King County failed to get proper consent. Four sued.
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A King County judge has just ruled that "heart-mark" allows your organs not just to be transplanted into a living person, but also your corpse donated to science. your family can't do anything to stop it.
21-year-old Jesse Smith was a proud organ donor. He signed the back of his driver’s license and told his mom that if he died, maybe he could save someone else's life. Jesse's chance came far sooner than anybody is comfortable with.
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Within hours of Jesse's sudden cardiac death, Nancy Adams learned her son's organs could not be used for live transplant. However, what she didn't know was that his brain, liver and spleen were being removed down at the King County Medical Examiner's Morgue and mailed to an outside research company.
“Our son's organs were taken without his permission and without our permission and sent to a medical research institute back in Maryland who we had never heard of.”
Last year, KIRO Team 7 Investigators discovered Smith's body parts ended up at the Stanley Medical Research Institute. Jesse's entire brain was used as a "normal control" sample in a study on schizophrenia.
Smith's family sued, saying King County didn't get proper consent. Their attorney, Steve Bulzomi recently spoke with Investigative Reporter Chris Halsne about the case
Halsne: "Had Jesse ever expressed an interest in donating his deceased body parts for medical research?"
Bulzomi: "Never. He expressed a very firm conviction that he wanted it to be used for transplantation. To help living persons. He had no contemplation of his donation being used to advance the study of mental illness.”A King County Superior Court judge now says ‘too bad.’
County attorneys successfully argued in court that Jesse Smith's " Designation as an Organ Donor on his Driver's License, authorized the donation to Stanley and "the donation of Smith's brain did not require the consent of Nancy Adams.. or anyone else."
According to Bulzomi, the message is alarming.
“If you've made the gift, your body is open for anybody to take your parts.”
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As for those of you who already have that heart on your license, unless you contact the living-legacy registry to limit your organ donation, your body parts can legally be handed over to universities, science labs, even government-related research projects.
This is truly amazing. I had no idea that they could sell your body parts. I always assumed when you donated your organs, they went to a person that needed a transplant. The idea of someone playing around with my body parts doesn't sit well with me.
For those of you in the Northwest, go to living-legacy registry. For everybody else, go to donate life. You can choose your state from the drop-down menu and see if they have special provisions for organ donation.
If your state doesn't have special provisions for organ donation, next time you renew your license, choose to be a non-donor. In the event of your death, your family will be asked if your organs can be donated. At this time it can be specified how the organs are to be used.
