ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, December 2, 1995 TAG: 9512040045
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: FAIRFAX
SOURCE: Associated Press
A judge is weighing whether to award damages to a couple who say they were pressured to donate their 16-year-old daughter's organs after she died in a car accident.
Kevin and Marie Bushlow, whose daughter Krystal died Aug. 13, 1992, sued Inova Health Systems for $2 million. They say the staff at Fairfax Hospital pressured them into donating Krystal's organs.
Circuit Judge Gerald B. Lee said Thursday that he will have to review the case because there is no legal precedent in Virginia on the issue of a person contesting an organ donation after giving consent.
In testimony Thursday, the couple said they twice had refused requests to donate their daughter's organs when hospital officials applied additional pressure that caused Kevin Bushlow to consent.
He said he finally agreed to the donation after nurses said a 14-year-old boy at Fairfax Hospital needed Krystal's heart to survive.
``I felt it would have been my fault if he had died. I couldn't help my daughter, and now they were telling me I'm killing the boy,'' he testified.
Krystal, hit while crossing a road in Lake Ridge, was flown to Fairfax Hospital. She was pronounced brain-dead the following afternoon.
Angela Gilliam, who works for the Washington Regional Transplant Consortium, testified that she would have talked to the Bushlows regardless of their responses to hospital staff. But she said that if Kevin Bushlow had rejected the idea, all discussions would have ended.
Gilliam said Krystal's organs were harvested nine hours after Kevin Bushlow signed the consent form, and he never called to change his mind.
LENGTH: Short : 40 linesby CNB