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To: tobyhill
This is a triumph of emotion over logic. Everyone feels sorry for sick kids, but there is a limited supply of transplant organs, and this kid getting one and living means someone else not getting one and dying. Who? I don't have any idea, but the existing life/death panels who determine who gets a transplant and who doesn't know. I can't help wondering if giving this lung to a person who is surely going to die from the disease is the best use of the organ. It is a classic example of what Bastiat wrote about in his That which is seen and that which is not seen This from a study by the New England Journal of Medicine
In a 2007 study, researchers at the University of Utah examined the risks and benefits of lung transplants for cystic fibrosis patients. They looked at 514 children with cystic fibrosis on the waiting list for a transplant, including 248 who did receive a transplant. Less than 1 percent of the transplant patients benefited from the procedure, the researchers concluded.

About half of the patients in each group died; there was no evidence that those who received transplants lived longer, the researchers said. The average survival time was 3.4 years after the transplant, and about 40 percent lived for at least five years after the transplant.

I'm reminded of an article from Hopkins medicine about ten years ago. The article was an impassioned plea for more money to be given to welfare moms with children with transplanted organs. The gist of it was some welfare skank's kid got a liver transplant, and the liver failed because she didn't alter her lifestyle to purchase the maintenance drugs. So they gave the kid another liver. Same result. So now we're at two livers that could have gone to a productive member of society, but went to someone who IF he had survived would have likely been a permanent welfare recipient anyway. Fortunately for other people on the transplant list the kid died before they could give him a third liver, which plan was in the works. The person writing the article (obviously a liberal) thought that this made the perfect case for giving more money to welfare recipients.

When your time is up it's up. Sad when it's a kid, but no one lives forever.

11 posted on 06/13/2013 5:10:40 AM PDT by from occupied ga (Your government is your most dangerous enemy)
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To: from occupied ga

Yeah well, just maybe God had other plans for her.


12 posted on 06/13/2013 5:13:33 AM PDT by mware
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To: from occupied ga
I agree, I had a childhood friend who had CF. However, someone who needed a lung because it got punctured or burned through breathing or a few other problems won't get those lungs and will die at 23 instead of being able to live till 85.
19 posted on 06/13/2013 8:02:37 AM PDT by Almondjoy
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