The parents of an 18-year-old Ohio man who suffered a brain injury while snowboarding have claimed in a lawsuit that doctors at a northwestern Pennsylvania hospital intentionally killed him so they could harvest his organs.
The lawsuit claims that Hamot Medical Centre doctors and a representative of the Centre For Organ Recovery and Education caused Gregory Jacobs' death by administering medication and by removing his breathing tube, causing him to suffocate.
The hospital denied the accusations.
"We express our deepest sympathies to the Jacobs' family, but Hamot Medical Centre absolutely did not remove Gregory Jacobs' organs while he was alive," Lucia Conti, a hospital spokeswoman, said in a statement issued on Wednesday night.
"Any claims otherwise are completely baseless."
The suit was filed in US District Court in Pittsburgh by Jacobs' parents, Michael and Teresa Jacobs, of Bellevue, Ohio. It seeks more than US$5 ($NZ10) million for their son's pain and suffering, medical bills and funeral expenses, plus punitive damages.
"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.
The Centre for Organ Recovery and Education, a Pittsburgh-based organisation that helps hospitals procure donated tissue, declined to comment.
Jacobs fell on March 8, 2007, while snowboarding at Peek 'n Peak Ski Resort in Findley Lake, New York, and was flown to the Erie hospital, the lawsuit said.
The suit claims Hamot contacted the Centre for Organ Recovery and Education about the donation of Jacobs' organs even though his parents, who were at the hospital, wanted him to live. CORE directed that Jacobs' organs be removed in the absence of a valid consent, the suit said.
"Gregory was alive before defendants started surgery and suffocated him in order to harvest his organs" including his heart, liver and kidneys, according to the suit.
The suit said Jacobs "experienced neither a cessation of cardiac activity nor a cessation of brain activities when surgeons began the procedures for removing his vital organs."
The suit said the Centre for Organ Recovery and Education benefited by obtaining Jacobs' organs "for transfer and sale to other individuals, who then paid money, a portion of which went to CORE, for the wrongful procurement of the organs."
