|
medpundit |
||
 |
 |
|
Sunday, February 23, 2003Requiescat in Pace: Jesica Santillan has died. Prayers for her family. Although her "self-proclaimed godfather" only grows more obnoxious. There have been few pictures of her family, but plenty of him leaning over her deathbed: Mahoney maintains that after the unsuccessful transplant, he was forced to battle the hospital's administration because it didn't want unflattering publicity about the error. Publicity is something Mahoney is quite good at. He raised the money for the transplant, and he’s inserted himself into the story at every possible moment. His point isn’t that the hospital denied their mistake, only that they didn’t mount a publicity campaign as soon as he wanted to get a second set of organs: He claims the hospital was more concerned about protecting its reputation than trying to find suitable donor organs from a compatible blood group. The delay damaged Santillan's brain and might have cost her her life, he charged. The administration needed to say it made a mistake "and not let a child lay on life support 10 or 14 days knowing that it's ruining her brain, it's ruining the other organs," he said. The hospital denies the allegation, saying it did everything possible to correct the error and give Santillan the best possible care. Doctors had said the second surgery would give the teen a 50 percent chance of survival. Without it, she would die, doctors had said. You can understand why they’d be hesitant to launch a publicity juggernaut. Not only because it would draw attention to their mistake, but because it would divert organs away from someone who might have had a better than 50% chance of benefiting from them. But now, the lawyers are involved (you knew they would be), and they’ve put the kibosh on Mr. Mahoney: Before noon Saturday, Mack Mahoney, the Louisburg home builder who had acted as the family spokesman and who had taken the story of the hospital's mistake to the news media, dropped out of the public eye. But I’m sure, having called the doctors “murderers”, Mr. Mahoney will be the driving force behind the lawsuit, too. In fact, you can't help but feel that the Santillan's are nothing more than pawns in Mr. Mahoney's grand publicity game. posted by Sydney on 2/23/2003 02:35:00 PM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
|
