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On 7 February 2003, 17-year-old Jesica Santillan received a heart-lung transplant at Duke University Medical Center, a facility located in North Carolina that is well known and widely respected in the world of medicine. Jesica (who preferred to go by Jesica rather than her birth name of Yesica and often saw her name misspelled as 'Jessica,' as in the example above) suffered for several years from cardiomyopathy, a life-threatening condition that left her heart and lungs weak. Because of a blood-type mismatch the transplanted organs were rejected by Jesica's body. A second set of compatible organs was located on 19 February 2003 and transplanted into Jesica on the 20th. But there was to be no miraculous recovery for Jesica: she was declared dead in the early afternoon of the 22nd after more than a day of no brain activity. She'd never really regained consciousness after her first heart-lung transplant, although she did manage to squeeze her mother's hand and wiggle her feet in response to the voices of her family and friends at least at one point. The error that ultimately cost Jesica her life hasn't yet been explained. The United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), the group that manages the nation's transplant system and provides computer services linking potential donors with patients needing organs, is still investigating the mix-up. How Jesica was paired with the first set of transplantable organs remains a mystery for now. UNOS says [S]he did not appear on the 'match run' — a computer-generated list of potential recipients who were medically compatible with the donor — because her blood type did not match the donor's, yet the organs were dispatched to Duke and put into Jesica. Jesica's sad story is more complicated than it first appears, because in 2000 her parents paid a smuggler to spirit the family into the United States from Mexico in hopes of getting her a transplant. They settled in Louisburg, N.C., near Duke University, and a local building contractor name Mack Mahoney established a foundation to raise money needed for Jesica's care. Yet even though her medical costs were covered by private donors, her case is controversial because there are far fewer organs available for transplant than there are patients waiting for them, and some critics have questioned the rightness of transplanting organs into an illegal immigrant who came into the U.S. specifically for that purpose ahead of legal residents also in desperate need of transplants. Fewer than 30 heart-lung transplants are performed in the United States each year, and most of those on the waiting list for such procedures die before their names reach the top of the list and appropriate matches are found for them. Two days after Jesica's passing, the following e-mail began to circulate: There may be some truth to this, but — as always — things are more complicated than they first appear. Duke officials said doctors were told by Carolina Donor Services (the state's organ procurement agency) that based on their initial assessment several organs may be viable for donation. Jesica's mother declined to speak with the procurement agency, Duke said in a statement, which seems to confirm the belief the family was approached and refused to grant permission. Yet Mack Mahoney, the local builder who became Jesica's champion, says the mother asked doctors about donating the girl's new heart and lungs as well as other organs and was told the heart and lungs could not be reused and the kidneys and liver were ruined from being on life support machines for too long. If that was the case, the family's refusal makes a great deal more sense — their child's organs wouldn't help anyone else. Jesica was also slated to be autopsied two days after her death, and a complete autopsy would not have been possible if parts had been taken away. Hospital officials can't confirm or deny the state of the organs because of patient confidentiality laws, so we may never get to the bottom of what issues the family's refusal was based upon.
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