Transplant Death at Duke University

            After waiting for 3 years to receive a new heart and lung, a 17-year old teenager died after surgeons at Duke University used donor organs from a person with an incompatible blood type, leading to the girl’s death.   According to a February 18, 2003 story published by the Associated Press, the organs came from a donor whose blood type was A, but Jesica’s blood type was O.  A Duke University Hospital spokesman blamed the fiasco on a “clerical error.”

            Medical mistakes cause anywhere from 44,000 to 98,000 deaths in the United States every year according to a study published recently by the National Academy of Sciences.  As the Duke University case demonstrates, such errors occur even in the most elite institutions.  In fact, in 1999, federal officials suspended Duke University Hospital’s license to conduct the University’s clinical trials and other human experiments because it had violated safety and ethics rules, failed to inform and warn volunteers of risks and due to lax record-keeping. 

            In 2002, New York City’s prestigious Mt. Sinai Hospital suspended its living donor program after a man died following donation of part of his liver to his younger brother.  New York regulators fined the hospital for poor monitoring of the patient’s condition and for having inadequate staff available to diagnose and respond to the patient’s deteriorating condition.  Similarly, in 2001, Johns Hopkins University was forced to shut down 2,400 federally funded experiments after a patient taking part in an experiment on asthma died from inhaling hexamethonium.  The lead researcher had not obtained FDA approval to use the chemical.