Jacobi Medical Center took my mom's organs without permission! Pay up!

[okarol]

Jacobi Medical Center took my mom's organs without permission! Pay up!

BY Thomas Zambito
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Friday, August 27th 2010, 4:00 AM

The daughter of a 62-year-old Bronx woman whose eyes and organs were harvested against her will sued a city hospital Thursday for $5 million.

Jo Drever says doctors at Jacobi Medical Center never bothered to ask her consent before removing her mother's body parts after she died unexpectedly of a heart attack on Aug. 25, 2009.

Drever said she didn't find out until the morning after her mother, Margaret Lanza, died that her organs had been harvested. She was cleaning out her mother's Bronx apartment when she received a call from the New York Organ Donor Network thanking her for the donation.

"To get that phone call, it was just devastating," Drever said.

The city, Jacobi Medical Center and the New York Organ Donor Network are named as defendants in the suit filed yesterday in Bronx Supreme Court.

In a separate suit, Drever's lawyer, Bonita Zelman, is suing the state for mistakenly entering Lanza's name as an organ donor on her driver's license renewal.

"This is a clear case of illegal organ harvesting and stealing body parts without consent," Zelman said. Drever "had no idea after she left that hospital room to make funeral arrangements they would march in there, take her mother's organs and mutilate her body."

Weeks before her mother's death, Drever said she helped her do the paperwork for her license renewal. She said her mother made her double-check to make sure she hadn't agreed to donate her organs when she died.

Zelman said after Lanza's death, her daughter found a letter from the state Department of Motor Vehicles thanking her for agreeing to be an organ donor and outlining her rights.

The license Lanza had when she was admitted to Jacobi did not list her as an organ donor, but her renewal did, Zelman said.

"God only knows how many other people this has happened to," Drever said. "I want someone to take responsibility for this."

A spokeswoman for the city declined to comment.

tzambito@nydailynews.com

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2010/08/27/2010-08-27_hosp_took_mas_organs_pay_up.html#ixzz0xyPdGrcj

[greg10]

Most states and NGOs can do a better job of promoting organ donation instead of having something like this happen and making potential donors even more skeptical about the whole process.  Clearly the government cannot pay potential donors to be donors (or can they).  But how about allowing potential donors to specify a charitable organization that would benefit should they be on a donor list.  This way the potential donor does not have a direct financial reward for being a donor, but there would be more incentive to donate.

http://www.yelp.com/biz/department-of-motor-vehicles-davis
12/14/2009 This DMV is generally has less people than other DMV's compared to Sacramento, Woodland and Roseville. I have one problem though. I went to get my drivers license renewed and I needed a new picture. After waiting about 10 mins my number was called and I got an African American women. I gave her my renewal paper and all was typical except when I started to go to the photo line. Looking at the papers I got from her, I had my temp license paper on the top and also another piece of paper. It said I am now an organ donor. I looked at it and went back to her. I told her sorry but I didn't say I wanted to be an organ donor. I wasn't even an organ donor previously. She looked at my renewal paper and said "opps" She then told me that it was already processing and she couldn't change it back. She told me that I can call the phone number on the donor paper that I got. After all this she didn't even apologize.   I called the phone number later and they removed me from the donor list, but my License has a pink dot on it when I received it.  I've heard from someone I knew this happened to them years back when they got a new license.  I didn't expect this to happen to me.  I never heard of this happening at any other DMV's and wondering if this happens often here. 

I am not against being an organ donor.  I just feel a little scammed from this DMV.  Not once did they even say organ donor while I was renewing my license.  If they asked me nicely or convinced me to be a donor,  I might of said yes.  Because of this experience, I now feel bitter to be an organ donor.  Its the fact that they changed my status without asking and that I had to spend time to fix their mistake.

[cookie2008]

When you renew your drivers license or any documents you are suppose to look over it and make sure it is correct and any mistakes should be caught and fixed right away.