Ohio Parents Sue Hospital, Claiming Officials Killed Son to Harvest His Organs

The parents of an 18-year-old Ohio man who suffered critical injuries while snowboarding have sued hospital officials, claiming they intentionally killed the teen so that his organs could be harvested.

Gregory Jacobs was injured in March 2008 while snowboarding at Peek ‘n Peak Ski Resort in Findley Lake, N.Y., and taken to Hamot Medical Center in Erie, Pa. for treatment. While being treated for a severe brain injury, officials from the hospital and a local organ-donation group caused his death by administering drugs to stop his breathing and removing his breathing tube, allowing him to suffocate, the parents’ lawsuit said.

The parents said they had made it clear that they did not want their son to be allowed to die so that his organs could be harvested and donated.

“But for the intentional trauma or asphyxiation of Gregory Jacobs, he would have lived, or, at the very least, his life would have been prolonged,” the lawsuit said.

In their suit, the parents argue that their son “experienced neither a cessation of cardiac activity nor a cessation of brain activities when surgeons began the procedures for removing his vital organs.”

After his death, the teens organs were sent to the Center for Organ Recovery and Education, which then distributed the organs “to other individuals, who then paid money, a portion of which went to CORE, for the wrongful procurement of the organs,” the suit alleges.

The lawsuit, filed this week in U.S. District Court in Pittsburgh by Michael and Teresa Jacobs of Bellevue, Ohio, seeks more than $5 million in damages for their son’s pain and suffering, medical bills, and funeral expenses.

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