Family Ends Life Support for Wrong Man; Misinfo Groups Cash In; Abortion Deciders

Welcome to the latest edition of Investigative Roundup, highlighting some of the best investigative reporting on healthcare each week.

Family Ended Life Support for Wrong Man

In a case of mistaken identity, PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center consulted the wrong family and removed life support for a Washington man who wasn’t related to them, KGW8 reported. As a result, the man’s actual family was not consulted in his end-of-life care.

Debbie Danielson was told by the hospital that her 60-year-old brother, Mike Beehler, was on life support after a terrible accident.

A week later, her brother, very much alive, called her. “I said, ‘You can’t be alive. You’re dead!'” Danielson told KGW8.

It turned out that Beehler’s roommate had choked on a piece of steak, and Beehler called 911. Somewhere in the aftermath, the roommate was misidentified as Beehler. And because PeaceHealth reported the death to the county medical examiner’s office and sent the misidentified body to the funeral home, the wrong family was also consulted about the funeral, cremation, and organ donation for the man they thought was their relative, without being asked to identify him.

“He’s dead and I’m supposed to be dead. Who knows what’s going on,” explained Beehler.

The roommate’s son was eventually notified of the death, but not the mix-up, and was able to make funeral arrangements. It wasn’t until KGW8 contacted the son more than 2 years later that he learned of the mistake: his father had been taken off life support by strangers.

PeaceHealth declined to answer questions about the mix-up, KGW8 reported.

Windfalls for COVID Misinfo Groups

Four groups that spread medical misinformation in the midst of the COVID pandemic and its aftermath have collected enormous sums of money from donations in recent years, the Washington Post found in tax filings from the nonprofits. The influx of funds has allowed the groups to further their anti-vaccination messaging on a national stage, push a legal agenda, and pay their leadership handsomely.

Children’s Health Defense, founded by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., received $23.5 million in contributions, grants, and other revenue in 2022. Informed Consent Action Network almost quadrupled its earnings to $13.4 million from the year before the pandemic began to 2022.

The Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance and America’s Frontline Doctors, which made a combined $1 million in 2020, collected more than $21 million together in 2022.

Arthur Caplan, PhD, a medical ethics expert from New York University, told the Washington Post, “These groups gave jet fuel to misinformation at a crucial time in the pandemic. … The richer they get, the worse off the public is because, indisputably, they’re spouting dangerous nonsense that kills people.”

Children’s Health Defense, for example, started an internet TV channel casting doubt on vaccine safety, and Informed Consent Action Network spent almost $6 million on “educational programs” that the group reported reached 6 million people.

The groups also spent millions on lawsuits against media outlets they say were suppressing information, on efforts to loosen restrictions on vaccine exemptions, suing medical boards for disciplining doctors who spread misinformation, and on legal defenses for such doctors, who have continued to tout ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine as treatments for COVID-19 and more.

Major donor groups to these groups, the Washington Post concluded, included the National Christian Foundation as well as the DonorsTrust, which describes itself as advancing conservative and libertarian causes.

The Impossible Decisions of an Abortion Committee

Doctors on Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s abortion committee grapple each month to deliver care to pregnant patients without facing legal repercussions in the wake of Tennessee’s abortion ban, ProPublica reported.

Often, this involves making decisions that go against their own medical advice, as one doctor, Sarah Osmundson, MD, MS, described. Since many abortion bans, including Tennessee’s, are vague about what level of risk is acceptable to the mother before terminating a pregnancy, physicians on the committee often err on the side of caution — delaying care or continuing a pregnancy despite their or the patients’ wishes, ProPublica reported.

In one example, the committee considered a 7-week-old, healthy pregnancy that would become high risk during delivery because of the patient’s preexisting medical conditions. The patient had requested an abortion, but could doctors terminate the pregnancy to avoid her risking blood loss and sepsis, or would they have to wait until an emergency was already upon them?

In other ban states, the same dilemmas arise — but often, without the resources and legal protection of a bigger medical institution like Vanderbilt, according to ProPublica. Doctors often consult informally with colleagues on cases, and fear jail time should they be the first to be taken to court for an illegal abortion.

A colleague of Osmundson’s, Mack Goldberg, MD, is one of the few physicians in the state who continues to perform abortions in medically complicated cases. But recently, despite his expertise and medical opinion, he’s sent patients out-of-state rather than assume the risk of endangering his own family should he run afoul of his state ban.

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