Line jumping will affect the person who WOULD have gotten it if the little girl doesn’t.
The little girl’s life is not worth more than whoever’s next in line, or vice versa.
I do not want the government deciding who gets, who doesn’t get, an organ.
Guidelines that everyone follows were put in place for all of us so we don’t have a popularity contest when the next liver comes up. That’s the point of guideline, because loved ones are dying, often in agony, and no one can possibly make a rational decision in that scenario.
So we make standards and we get in line and it’s “fair,” fair as we can make it, without emotional appeals and who-gets-the-most-press and who-has-the-best-connections.
Agreed.
I completely agree with you and am having trouble understanding how people just can’t understand this.
Do we really want a cabinet level appointee overriding the OPTN and deciding who should get someone else’s vital organs? And I thought the IRS scandal was frightening.
The parents are not merely asking to give a child an adult’s lungs they are asking to skip ahead of others on the registry and they are trying to do so by getting the drive by media to gin up a national emotional response. They deserve our prayers and empathy but they do not deserve special favors from Kathleen Sebelius.. Whom shockingly I happen to agree with on this occasion ( it is more likely however that I agree with her lawyers:)
Unless they are going to just let a set of lungs die, I don’t have an issue with following the rules. There has to be some basis for the decision, and as sad as it is, a decision has to be made.
Unfortunately, it's not that simple.
Without an adult lung, the little girl only has weeks to live. Her condition is that serious.
But maybe the next adult on the list has a condition that is far less serious, and perhaps that adult could live for years while awaiting a transplant.
And what about the percent chance of a transplant being successful in each case?
This situation is difficult, and heartbreaking. The only thing I know for sure is that I would want a team of medical doctors looking at this.
It sounds cold but I agree that if a board of doctors made this rule and it makes medical sense because an older person has a better chance of survival, then the older person should get the lung. Just because a little girl is cute and likely will die without the lung is not a reason to let her have it if there is someone else with a better chance of survival who is willing to take it. We cannot base policy decisions on gut-reaction sympathy. I really don’t mean to sound cruel but if someone else gets the lung and this girl dies as a result, so be it.