Courts Deny Donation of Live Infant’s Organs : Medicine: Child was born without a brain. Parents wanted her healthy vital parts used for transplants.

The wishes of a Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., couple to donate the organs of their infant daughter born without a brain were thwarted Friday when an appeals court refused to intervene in a case in which it was being asked to do nothing less than redefine the distinction between life and death.

The three-judge panel denied without comment a request for an emergency order which would have overturned a lower court ruling blocking doctors from removing vital organs from 6-day-old Theresa Ann Pearson.

The four-pound infant was born last Saturday with a rare condition called anencephaly, in which most of the skull is missing and the brain is no more than the nub of the stem. But that bit of brain is enough to control breathing and heartbeat, and as of late Friday the tiny infant remained alive without mechanical support. Although the baby has defied the odds by surviving beyond a few minutes, she was expected to die at any moment.

To her parents, Laura Campo and Justin Pearson, the baby is already dead. They want to donate the baby’s healthy organs to other children in need of a kidney, liver, heart, eyes or lung. “She has no life,” said Campo. “She has no skull. She has no brain. She can’t see or smell or hear. There’s nothing.

“It should be up to us to make these decisions.”

But Circuit Court Judge Estella Moriarty said Thursday it was for the law to decide. She ruled that a 1980 Florida statute does not allow a person to be declared dead while any part of the brain is functioning.

“I can’t authorize someone to take your baby’s life, however short, however unsatisfactory, to save another child,” said the judge during a tearful hearing with the parents.

However, Moriarty did say doctors could remove transplant organs from the baby as long as the operations did not kill her.

Walter Campbell Jr., the couple’s attorney, on Friday asked the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in West Palm Beach to overrule Moriarty, and permit removal of any of the infant’s organs. “We are asking the court to accept a medical definition of death that includes anencephalic children and allow these parents to do what they feel is best for their child and other children,” Campbell said.

The court refused.

The birth of Theresa Ann has thrust her parents, described as “hard-working, middle-class people” by their attorney, into both an emotional maelstrom and the national spotlight. Campo is a waitress at a restaurant called The Feedbag. Pearson is an asphalt worker. Both are 30 years old, and together have two healthy children, aged 3 and 4. Campo also has a 13-year-old son from a previous marriage.

“These people are very much pro-life,” said Campbell, who is representing the couple for free, “and they want to turn this tragedy into something beneficial. They want the spirit of their child to live on through another child.”

The question of what to do with babies such as Theresa Ann recalls the 1987 controversy over Loma Linda University Medical Center’s anencephalic organ donor program, begun after doctors there successfully transplanted a heart taken from an anencephalic infant to a Canadian boy. The next 13 attempts to harvest organs from anencephalic babies failed, and the program was scrapped in July, 1988.

Campo and Pearson learned that their baby was anencephalic four weeks before her birth. Doctors contacted the organ donor program at the University of Miami on behalf of the couple.

“I love kids as much as anybody,” Campo told the judge. “If my kid can help another baby live, then that is what we want to do.”

But Moriarty said she was bound by the law, which is similar to that in California and every other state. “Death is a fact,” said the judge, “not an opinion.”

Les Olson, director of organ procurement for the University of Miami, said that after a nationwide computer search Friday morning showed no matches for Theresa Ann’s kidney, only the baby’s corneas were likely to be viable as transplants. As the baby slowly dies, he said, so too would her organs.

“Their baby has no chance at life, and never did,” said Olson. “They see the possibility of their pregnancy saving other lives. But the baby does not meet the legal criteria of death. So they’re stuck. It’s Catch 22.

Added Olson: “Even if the court had reversed that, it may be difficult to get a physician willing to do it. Essentially, what you’re talking about is euthanasia, and that’s not going to happen. Society would have to redefine death as death of the cerebral hemisphere, and I don’t think society is ready to do that.”

Campbell argues that the law which defines death should be changed “so that anencephalic children are declared dead when born. I know, you look at the pictures and see a child. But there is no skull. Remove the gauze cap, and you look right into the brain stem. The child feels nothing, and we want the court to recognize that.”

He said he would consult with the parents this weekend on whether or not to take the fight to a higher court.

Anencephalic births occur in one of every 500 fetuses in the United States. Eight percent are stillborn, and only 400 to 500 a year live longer than a few minutes, according to doctors.