From: Mack Mahoney
       Louisburg, NC

Subject: Duke/UNOS change in procedure

In the wake of the Jesica Santillan tragedy, Duke University Hospital and the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) announced Friday, that they have "overhauled" their systems and procedures to better insure that patient/donor blood types match in future transplants. Duke Hospital CEO, Dr. William J. Fulkerson said in an internal staff memo, dated June 27th that, “the greatest tribute to Jesica Santillan’s memory would be a safer organ transplant system”, and that Duke pledged to use their experience from Jesica’s tragedy to contribute to that goal.

It’s wonderful news for the American public to hear that UNOS and Duke University are working together in a unified effort to prevent a tragedy such as Jesica’s from ever happening again. However, the point that seems to be missing is the fact that UNOS already had an excellent program in place at the time Jesica received the ‘botched’ transplant at Duke. According to the Santillan’s new lawyer, noted Texas Attorney, Howard L. Nations, if you check UNOS procedures which were effective on February 7, 2003, (when Jesica was admitted to Duke) you will see that from the moment Duke University Hospital received the first phone call announcing that organs were available, until the moment Dr. Jaggers sewed the mis-matched organs into Jesica’s body, at least 11 people down a long line of “safeguards”, failed to preform the most minimal part of their duty. That is to match patient/donor blood types. Could it be that in order to appear as if they are doing ‘something’ about this problem and/or to cover up for super incompetence, Duke and UNOS have decided to “fix” a system that was not broken in the first place? How large a ‘safety net’ is needed to assure that at least ‘one’ of 11 people do their job? Could it be that the American public is not being told the complete truth here? According to a recent government probe into Duke University and this lifesaving process, (as well as Howard Nations own investigation), if only one of these 11 people had taken the most minimal care to follow existing UNOS procedures, Jesica would be alive today.

Sincerely,
Mack Mahoney, President
Jesica’s Hope Chest, Inc.
www.4JHC.org