Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 28, 1992 TAG: 9203280181
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: MIAMI LENGTH: Medium
The three-judge panel denied without comment a request to overturn a lower court ruling that bars doctors from removing vital organs from 6-day-old Theresa Ann Pearson.
The 4-pound baby 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 late Friday the tiny girl remained alive without mechanical support. Although she has defied the odds by surviving beyond a few minutes, she was expected to die at any moment.
Her parents, Laura Campo and Justin Pearson, want to donate her healthy organs to other children in need of kidneys, liver, heart, eyes, even lungs. "She has no life," Campo said. "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."
Circuit Judge Estella Moriarty said Thursday that the law decides. She ruled that Florida law 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.
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, Friday asked the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in West Palm Beach to overrule Moriarty. "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 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 and together have two healthy children, ages 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."
"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 other states. "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," Olson said. "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 said that he would consult with the parents this weekend on whether to take the fight to a higher court.
by CNB