Martin Welsh M.D.

[Zaphoon]

I missed a bit before the ending of that "Three Rivers" episode. I came back in the show when they were wheeling Mandy into the operating room. It confused the heck out of me because as he was being wheeled in, all of these donor families were saying thank you. Shucks, I thought he was going in to be operated on so he could keep on going for a bit longer.

Did I miss something? How can you take organs out of a living, breathing human being without killing him? I'm guessing he was going to die on the operating table during his surgery and it was just a given. "Well, sir, we will operate on you to save/extend your life but its really going to kill you."

I'm usually this confused about most things.

Zaphoon

[joelc]

LOL.

He decided he did not want to live so made arrangements to terminate life support and donate his organs. The whole show was a total misrepresentation of ALS. I was disgusted with the inaccuracy. Trust Hollywood to not do their homework and screw things up.

[Zaphoon]

Thanks for clearing that up for me, Joel. I was going to watch the thing all over again but just couldn't bring myself to do it. I thought it might make sense to me the 2nd time around.

[halfin]

I thought they glossed over the fact that this was physician assisted suicide. The ethics panel said they were OK with it, but where were the hospital lawyers? It is still not legal in most states.

I did find the depiction of ALS interesting. They showed Mandy being suctioned, the first time I have ever seen this other than in Joel's video on his web site. To me it looked pretty realistic but like I said I don't have much to go on.

[Erica]

Another observation: It was interesting that all these transplant pts that happened to be there at the same time with ALS pt ended up being a perfect match for donor tissue.
Not a credible episode.