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Recovered ‘brain dead’ man dancing at sister’s wedding reminds us organ donors are sometimes alive

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TJ Hoover and his sister on her wedding day

From LifeSiteNews

By Heidi Klessig, M.D.

Since brain dead people are not dead, it is not surprising that the only multicenter, prospective study of brain death found that the majority of brains from ‘brain dead’ people were not severely damaged at autopsy.

In 2021, a supposedly brain dead man, Anthony Thomas “TJ” Hoover II, opened his eyes and looked around while being wheeled to the operating room to donate his organs. Hospital staff at Baptist Health hospital in Richmond, Kentucky assured his family that these were just “reflexes.”

But organ preservationist Natasha Miller also thought Hoover looked alive. “He was moving around – kind of thrashing. Like, moving, thrashing around on the bed,” said Miller in an NPR interview. “And then when we went over there, you could see he had tears coming down. He was visibly crying.” Thankfully, the procedure was called off, and Hoover was able to recover and even dance at his sister’s wedding this past summer.

Last month, this case was brought before a U.S. House subcommittee investigating organ procurement organizations. Whistleblowers claimed that even after two doctors refused to remove Hoover’s organs, Kentucky Organ Donor Affiliates ordered their staff to find another doctor to perform the surgery.

Because brain death is a social construct and not death itself, I can tell you exactly how many “brain dead” patients are still alive: all of them. When brain death was first proposed by an ad hoc committee at Harvard Medical School in 1968, the committee admitted that these people are not dead, but rather “desperately injured.” They thought that these neurologically injured people were a burden to themselves and others, and that society would be better served if we redefined them as being “dead.” They described their reasoning this way:

Our primary purpose is to define irreversible coma as a new criterion for death. There are two reasons why there is need for a definition: (1) Improvements in resuscitative and supportive measures have led to increased efforts to save those who are desperately injured. Sometimes these efforts have only partial success so that the result is an individual whose heart continues to beat but whose brain is irreversibly damaged. The burden is great on patients who suffer permanent loss of intellect, on their families, on the hospitals, and on those in need of hospital beds already occupied by these comatose patients. (2) Obsolete criteria for the definition of death can lead to controversy in obtaining organs for transplantation.

Since brain dead people are not dead, it is not surprising that the only multicenter, prospective study of brain death found that the majority of brains from “brain dead” people were not severely damaged at autopsy – and 10 actually looked normal. Dr. Gaetano Molinari, one of the study’s principal investigators, wrote:

[D]oes a fatal prognosis permit the physician to pronounce death? It is highly doubtful whether such glib euphemisms as “he’s practically dead,” … “he can’t survive,” … “he has no chance of recovery anyway,” will ever be acceptable legally or morally as a pronouncement that death has occurred.

But history shows that despite Dr. Molinari’s doubts, “brain death,” a prognosis of possible death, went on to be widely accepted as death per se. Brain death was enshrined into US law in 1981 under the Uniform Determination of Death Act. Acceptance of this law has allowed neurologically disabled people to be redefined as “dead” and used as organ donors. Unfortunately, most of these people do not, like TJ Hoover, wake up in time. They suffer death through the harvesting of their organs, a procedure often performed without the benefit of anesthesia.

Happily, some do manage to avoid becoming organ donors and go on to receive proper medical treatment. In 1985, Jennifer Hamann was thrown into a coma after being given a prescription that was incompatible with her epilepsy medication. She could not move or sign that she was awake and aware when she overheard doctors saying that her husband was being “completely unreasonable” because he would not donate her organs. She went on to made a complete recovery and became a registered nurse.

Zack Dunlap was declared brain dead in 2007 following an ATV accident. Even though his cousin demonstrated that Zack reacted to pain, hospital staff told his family that it was just “reflexes.” But as Zack’s reactions became more vigorous, the staff took more notice and called off the organ harvesting team that was just landing via helicopter to take Zack’s organs. Today, Zack leads a fully recovered life.

Colleen Burns was diagnosed “brain dead” after a drug overdose in 2009, but wasn’t given adequate testing and awoke on the operating table just minutes before her organ harvesting surgery. Because the Burns family declined to sue, the hospital only received a slap on the wrist: the State Health Department fined St. Joseph’s Hospital Health Center in Syracuse, New York, just $6,000.

In 2015, George Pickering III was declared brain dead, but his father thought doctors were moving too fast. Armed and dangerous, he held off a SWAT team for three hours, during which time his son began to squeeze his hand on command. “There was a law broken, but it was broken for all the right reasons. I’m here now because of it,” said George III.

Trenton McKinley, a 13-year-old boy, suffered a head injury in 2018 but regained consciousness after his parents signed paperwork to donate his organs. His mother told CBS News that signing the consent to donate allowed doctors to continue Trenton’s intensive care treatment, ultimately giving him time to wake up.

Doctors often say that cases like these prove nothing, and that they are obviously the result of misdiagnosis and medical mistakes. But since all these people were about to become organ donors regardless of whether their diagnoses were correct, I doubt they find the “mistake” excuse comforting.

However, Jahi McMath was indisputably diagnosed as being “brain dead” correctly. She was declared brain dead by three different doctors, she failed three apnea tests, and she had four flat-line EEGs, as well as a cerebral perfusion scan showing “no flow.” But because her parents refused to make her an organ donor and insisted on continuing her medical care, McMath recovered to the point of being able to follow commands. Two neurologists later testified that she was no longer brain dead, but a in minimally conscious state. Her case shows that people correctly declared “brain dead” can still recover.

READ: Woman with no brainwave activity wakes up after hearing her daughter’s voice

Brain death is not death because the brain death concept does not reflect the reality of the phenomenon of death. Therefore, any guideline for its diagnosis will have no basis in scientific facts. People declared brain dead are neurologically disabled, but they are still alive. “Brain dead” organ donation is a concealed form of euthanasia.

Heidi Klessig MD is a retired anesthesiologist and pain management specialist who writes and speaks on the ethics of organ harvesting and transplantation. She is the author of “The Brain Death Fallacy” and her work may be found at respectforhumanlife.com.

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Frontier Centre for Public Policy

Health Risks from Water Fluoridation are not just in RFK’s Head

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From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Lee Harding

“There is evidence that fluoride exposure has been associated with the diseases [and] disorders that RFK listed, but with caveats”

Water fluoridation has returned to the forefront of public policy debates thanks to environmental lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Kennedy is expected to have a role in the Department of Health and Human Services, giving his opinion more weight than ever.

In a post to X, Kennedy wrote, “On January 20, the Trump White House will advise all U.S. water systems to remove fluoride from public water. Fluoride is an industrial waste associated with arthritis, bone fractures, bone cancer, IQ loss, neurodevelopmental disorders, and thyroid disease.”

The post links to a High Wire video interview with lawyer Michael Connett, lead attorney in a successful case against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Last September, Obama-appointed District Court Judge Edward Chen sided with Connett and mandated the EPA to more strictly regulate water fluoridation.

Chen’s ruling states, “In all, there is substantial and scientifically credible evidence establishing that fluoride poses a risk to human health; it is associated with a reduction in the IQ of children and is hazardous at dosages that are far too close to fluoride levels in the drinking water…”

Fluoride is a poisonous industrial byproduct, handled in its pure form by people in hazmat suits. Dealing with sodium fluoroacetate was an expense for the Aluminum Company of America before Edward Bernays helped turn it into a profitable venture. In the 1940s, Bernays, the father of modern public relations and nephew of psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, used mass psychology and public health advocates to have fluoride put in drinking water. Fluoridation opponents were dismissed as kooks ever after.

The toxicology adage “The dose makes the poison” applies. Chemicals, including drugs, can benefit health in some respects but undermine it in others. Unfortunately, recent analysis suggests the “side effects” of fluoridation may outweigh its alleged benefits.

A recent analysis by Cochrane Reviews said water fluoridation may provide a slight dental benefit, but less so since the mid 70’s when manufacturers commonly added fluoride to toothpaste. Fluoride reverses or stops early tooth decay by remineralizing teeth, making them stronger. It also reduces bacteria’s ability to make acids that cause decay.

Fluoride capsules have little effect on teeth, which suggests its main positive effect is topical (meaning by direct contact). An obvious question follows: if fluoride of roughly one part per million passing over the teeth before swallowing, what is its effect during digestion or bodily storage? After all half of fluoride is passed through urine, while the remainder is stored in the body.

In 2020 The Institute of Technology and Business in the Czech Republic made a six-article issue dedicated to the mechanisms of fluoride toxicity. One explained in the abstract that “fluoride is an enzymatic poison, inducing oxidative stress, hormonal disruptions, and neurotoxicity.” The toxic effects were magnified when trace amounts of aluminum were present, and “might contribute to unexpected epidemics in the future.”

Sleeplessness, hypothyroidism, and autism to conditions linked to fluoride consumption, whether through natural sources or water fluoridation. The risks were found through statistical studies comparing health issues in water fluoridated and non-fluoridated areas, biochemical analysis, and human and animal studies.

“We concur with the conclusions of many authors over the world that fluoride neurotoxicity is a serious risk associated with elevated fluoride exposure… […] Fluoride toxicity is a slow, hidden process. Evolving evidence should inspire scientists and health authorities to re-evaluate claims about the safety of fluoride…”

In 2019, researchers from Canadian and U.S. universities tested over 500 Canadian women throughout their pregnancies for fluoride levels in their urine. Their study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), found that for each milligram of fluoride per litre in the mother’s urine, IQ dropped 4.5 points in their male children tested at ages of three to four years.

Christine Till, a professor in the Department of Psychology at York University in Toronto, told CNN, “At a population level, that’s a big shift. That translates to millions of IQ levels lost.”

Ashley Malin, an assistant professor in the University of Florida’s Epidemiology Department, had similar findings in her Florida study, published in JAMA in 2024.

“There is evidence that fluoride exposure has been associated with the diseases [and] disorders that RFK listed, but with caveats,” Malin told the Virginia Mercury in a recent article.

“Aside from fluoride’s impacts on neurodevelopment, I think that there is more that we don’t know about health effects of low-level fluoride exposure than what we do know, particularly for adult health outcomes,” Malin added.

In August, the National Toxicology Program (NTP) in the United States found that fluoride levels higher than 1.5 mg/L (the highest acceptable level in Canada) are associated with lower IQs in children. The NTP said there is insufficient evidence to conclude that there are similar risks at the recommended level of 0.7 mg/L.

Montreal recently ended its water fluoridation and hopefully other cities will follow. Only a misguided nanny state would poison young minds and old bones for the sake of people who don’t brush their teeth.

Lee Harding is a Research Fellow for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.

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Health

Fauci admitted to RFK Jr. that none of 72 mandatory vaccines for children has ever been safety tested

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From LifeSiteNews

By Doug Mainwaring

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s nominee to head the Department of Health and Human Services, recently recounted how Dr. Anthony Fauci had to admit that none of the 72 vaccines currently mandated for children in the U.S. has ever been safety tested.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to head the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), recently recounted how when threatened with a lawsuit, Dr. Anthony Fauci finally had to eat his words and admit that none of the 72 vaccines currently mandated for children in the U.S. has ever been safety tested.

“For many years, I was saying that not one of the 72 vaccines mandated for children has ever been safety tested in pre-licensing, placebo-controlled trials,” began Kennedy, speaking at a Hillsdale College event. “Not one.”

Fauci went so far as to call Kennedy “a liar.”

When then-President Trump appointed Kennedy to run a vaccine safety commission, Trump ordered Fauci and Collins to meet with him along with White House counsel present.

Kennedy told Fauci, “You say I’m lying. For eight years you’ve been saying I’m lying,” and challenged Fauci to “show me the study” which shows that the multitude of vaccines America’s children are required to receive have been safety-tested.

Fauci claimed that he didn’t have it with him. “It’s back in Bethesda. I’ll send it to you.”

“I never got it,” said Kennedy, “so I sued him.”

“After stonewalling us for a year, their lawyers met us on the courthouse steps and said, ‘Yup, you’re right. We never had any study,’” said Kennedy.

There’s no downstream liability, there’s no front-end safety testing – that saves them a quarter billion dollars – and there’s no marketing and advertising costs, because the federal government is ordering 78 million school kids to take that vaccine every year.

What better product could you have? And so there was a gold rush to add all these new vaccines to the schedule that we don’t need. Most of these vaccines are unnecessary. Many of them are for diseases that are not even casually contagious.

It was a gold rush, because if you get onto that schedule, it’s a billion dollars a year for your company.

And in many cases, NIH is earning the royalties.

According to Kennedy, more obscene than the huge profits being horded by Big Pharma are the vast number of negative side-effects from all those untested vaccines.

“Neurological diseases” have “exploded,” he said.

“ADHD, sleep disorders, language delays, ASD, autism, Tourette’s syndrome, ticks, narcolepsy. These are all things that I never heard of,” said Kennedy. “Autism went from one in 10,000 in my generation according to CDC data to one in every 34 kids today.”

Kennedy is known for vehemently opposing vaccines, a stance he adopted after the mothers of vaccine-injured children implored him to look into the research linking thimerosal to neurological injuries, including autism. He went on to found Children’s Health Defense, an organization with the stated mission of “ending childhood health epidemics by eliminating toxic exposure,” largely through vaccines.

Kennedy said in October that Trump has asked him to reorganize and “clean up” federal health agencies like the CDC and FDA. This would involve ending conflicts of interest that favor the interests of pharmaceutical companies over evidence-based medicine, according to Kennedy.

Trump has also tasked him with ending “the chronic disease epidemic in this country,” especially chronic disease among children.

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