A Short Life Ends For Baby Theresa -- Child Born Without Brain Dies In Mother's Arms; Court Rulings Prevented Donation Of Her Organs

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - Theresa Ann Pearson - the baby born with no brain - died yesterday in her mother's arms when her fitful breathing finally stuttered to a halt nine days after it began.

Born March 21 at Broward General Medical Center weighing just 4 pounds and 1 ounce, Theresa lost a pound in the past week as she crept toward a death that was never in doubt, with nothing but a tiny brain stub to keep her heart and lungs pumping.

In the hours after her death, all those involved in her brief life agreed they could never forget the little girl who no one expected to even be born alive. The baby who defied almost impossible odds against living more than a day - and kept on breathing long enough to focus national attention on a little-understood affliction.

"This little baby touched so many people's lives in her short time," said her father, Justin Pearson, 30, a Coral Springs, Fla., cement worker. "We just hope people don't forget her now that she's gone."

Even as her breathing faltered yesterday, lawyers maneuvered in vain to persuade the Florida Supreme Court to hear her family's pleas that they be allowed to donate her vital organs so they could salvage some legacy from her tragic birth.

JUDGES REJECT PLEA

Judges in two courts last week rejected the family's claim that a state law prohibiting their daughter from being declared dead was an unconstitutional invasion of their right to make a personal decision in privacy. The judges ruled that it would be a crime to take Theresa's organs as long as her rudimentary brain stem continued to work.

Lawyers who volunteered to help the family vowed yesterday to continue their appeals in her name. One of them, Scott Mager, flew to Tallahassee, Fla., to hand-deliver the family's petition to the high court, then marched through the halls of the Legislature handing out copies of a draft amendment to the state law defining when death occurs.

Death came at 3:45 p.m.

Minutes later, Theresa's parents, Pearson and Laura Campo, left the hospital by a back door to avoid a crowd of reporters from around the world.

"We'd just like to thank everybody for their support," Pearson said wearily later in the evening. "What can you say? What are the words you say to all these people who came forward and tried to help us. . . .

"We just want them to know the fight isn't over until the law changes. We want them to know that life is worth fighting for - and that's all we felt like we did."

Other members of Theresa's family gathered together before the glare of television lights in the hospital lobby and thanked the public for its support.

"We cried together," said Dori Gallagher, Theresa's aunt, describing the moment of Theresa's death. "We hugged together."

A team of doctors from the University of Miami was dispatched shortly after Theresa was pronounced dead to retrieve her corneas for transplant. Discussions were under way last night to decide whether to remove tissue samples from her body for use by a Boston research group studying anencephaly, the ailment that killed her.

ORGANS RENDERED USELESS

Theresa's more valuable heart, lungs and liver - organs needed by some 350 children nationwide - were rendered useless by the acid and carbon dioxide that built up in her blood as her breathing lapsed for up to 30 seconds at a time in the hours before her death, doctors said.

The possibility of her organs being viable was fairly well lost by Saturday night when her breathing started to fail, said Les Olson, director of organ procurement for the University of Miami.

Theresa's downward spiral picked up speed at 7:30 p.m. Sunday, when doctors took her off the ventilator she had been placed on the night before in an effort to preserve her organs.

Campo and Pearson had hoped they would prevail in their emergency appeal to the Florida Supreme Court and that recipients could be found quickly for her organs. The high court refused to hear the case yesterday because the 4th District Court of Appeal, which considered the case on Friday, hadn't certified it as one of "great public importance."

The appellant court later made that certification, but the high court did not rule on it.

In any event, the assistance in breathing Theresa was getting from the ventilator was futile by Sunday night because her organs - some no bigger than a fingernail - already had begun to fail, doctors told her parents.

"We had to explain to them all they were doing was prolonging the baby's death," said Dr. Brian Udell, director of the hospital's neonatal intensive-care unit. "It was their wish that the baby's organs be kept in the best possible shape while they continued the court fight."

But Olson said Theresa's blood probably was already too toxic at that point for her organs to remain viable or usable.

Dr. Richard Beach, the neonatologist who assisted at Theresa's birth and oversaw her case, gently lifted the tiny infant from the wheeled incubator that had been her only home, cradled her open head in its gauzy covering and walked her to a small room.

"They gave her to us and we held her," Pearson said. "We were holding her together. We were with her. We were a family. We had a lot of love for the baby. We always wished it could be different. But we know this was for the best."

Less than five minutes later, Theresa was handed back to doctors.

"The baby was dead," Udell said. "The cause was cardiopulmonary arrest - her heart and lungs stopped working - but the real cause was the affliction she came into the world with at birth, anencephaly."