Posted on 06/05/2013 2:34:10 PM PDT by blueyon
Edited on 06/05/2013 2:46:14 PM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
A federal judge on Wednesday ordered the U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary to suspend existing organ allocation rules to give a 10-year-old Pennsylvania girl a better chance at a life-saving lung transplant.
U.S. District Court Judge Michael Baylson told Kathleen Sebelius to direct the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network, or OPTN, to make an exception to the so-called "Under-12" rule as it applies to Sarah Murnaghan, who has end-stage cystic fibrosis, for at least 10 days, until a hearing on June 14. That move means that the girl can be considered more quickly for organs as an adult, instead of being limited to the pediatric transplant list.
The ruling, which grants a temporary restraining order, applies only to Sarah, although Baylson indicated that he would consider a similar move for another child in Sarah's circumstances, if a family presented the case in court.
Parents interviewed just on CNN...Sebellious made her determination last Friday not to intervene. The family was informed by a staffer via email...nice!
The family asked for a meeting which was scheduled for Yesterday, that was delayed three times later in the day...then postponed to Today...then postponed yet again.
Family said they could not wait for the meeting and that’s why they brought the lawsuit.
The sick part here is the left probably love this outcome => don’t like it, go grovel in front of a judge.
Sooner rather than later...more of the same and it won’t even be a noteworthy story.
This is the future under Obamacare.
Of course not, but that is a false analogy. General medical care is not the same as donor organs.
The OPTB is not rationing care, it is allocating a finite and very scarce resource so as to ensure the greatest benefit for the greatest number of recipients.
It does no good to allocate organs based on media representations and photo ops with cute kids. The criteria have to be medically based on success rates.
The desperate parents have used the media to create a firestorm of sympathetic yet ignorant do-gooders, while politicians grandstand for face time and the judge has opened a can of legal worms that I hope a higher court makes him eat.
Decisions on criteria have to be made. Are we going to do it with emotion or with medical science? Are we going to let anyone sue and have the courts second guess the medical experts opinions every time somebody doesn’t make the list?
You are making the assumption that there are others with a few weeks to live and she will be jumping the line. I would assume that those in the most critical need will be given the transplants first. It is not a given that someone else will die because she gets a transplant. It is done on a priority basis and the availability of organs.
I was just watching Sean Hannity and he was supposed to have Sarah’s father and aunt on the show but they had to rush back to the hospital, according to Peter Johnson who has direct contact with the family(And Sarah’s aunt) Sarah is in a dire situation tonight..please pray for this baby girl..let her survive long enough to get these lungs
My understanding is she’s already at the top of the list for pediatrics, which has little activity...I’m no expert but I’m not sure just how much this really increases her chances.
From the news coverage over the last day it sounds as though perhaps the dividing of the “lists” hasn’t caught up with the current state of medicine...personally I’d like to see one list and if someone on the list doesn’t meet the criteria for a particular transplant, because they’re too small, etc., keep moving down the list in order until you find someone who’s the optimal match for each situation. JMHO.
Thanks lj, ;)
1) I honestly hope the child does get a “life saving” transplant, and lives a long happy life
2) [the transplant] will not cure her of the disease, and soon [the disease] will destroy her “new” lungs
3) that twenty year old who died waiting for those lungs is still dead.
4) Go back to statement #1
Not sure why you’re interested in giving a lung to a fictitious dead person.
Good question. This rogue administration does not like being told how to act.
The experts will still have their say. The issue is getting her on the list so she can compete with the others using the existing criteria.
Some things in life - many, actually - don’t have a perfect solution. There often is no “this is the perfect way, everything will work just as desired, and all other choices are totally bad”. But if we use a proplerly calibrated moral compass, every decision gets much more clear, and at the very least good people can agree on what is really immoral/wrong and what way is moral/good.
Knowing that the results aren’t guaranteed, not everyone will agree, etc.
Some things about this material world just plain are rotten, and the only way through is prayer, developing humility and an attitude of surrendering to the will of God, and personally trying to always do what is right, come hell or high water.
My understanding is that the child’s parents don’t want their daughter bumped to the top of the list or over anyone who is sicker and in more urgent need no matter their age.
Their gripe, which may have some merit IMO, is that children 12 and over and adults, who meet the criteria for eligibility for a lung transplant, are given a multifaceted allocation score from 0-100 that ranks them on the list based on the urgency and severity of their condition. Children under 12 however are ranked based on how long they’ve been on the list for adult lungs without any respect to their urgency or severity. And children under twelve are only classified as Priority 1 or Priority 2 for either adult or pediatric lungs, although they are given priority over adults for pediatric lungs, but being pediatric lungs being much more rare and also that given the Priority 1/Priority 2 classification means that in some cases, a child in a less urgent need could receive a lung transplant before Sarah and many more adults much less sicker and in urgent need than Sarah could and will receive an adult lung ahead of her.
Supposedly the reasoning behind the different scoring systems for those under 12 is that there simply isn’t enough data on the “outcomes” for those in the under 12 age group to score them using the same criteria as adults. But then that is because so fewer lung transplants are performed in this age group simply because so fewer pediatric lungs become available for transplant and fewer in this age group medically qualify for adult lungs and those who do rarely live long enough to receive one. And keep in mind that what data is available for the under 12 age group also includes children much younger than 12, much younger than Sarah who unlike Sarah and probably some others near but not yet 12, would not be good candidates for an adult lung. Some doctors, including Sarah’s are saying that the scoring system for those under 12 is arbitrary and outdated, that cutting off access to the much more extensive and medically sound allocation scoring at age 12 is not supported by more recent medical developments and diagnostic testing.
I think the basis for their asking for an exception to the 12+ rule is that the rule is arbitrary based only on chronological age and not based on size, weight, being a candidate for an adult lung and where her allocation score would put her on the waiting list if she was 11 years, 11 months, and 31 days old plus 1 day.
Her parents claim, and I don’t know if this is true or how to verify it, is that Sarah’s doctors say she is an excellent candidate for an adult lung with a good, although not guaranteed prognosis but probably no better or no worse than a similarly situated adult, that based on the an allocation score that her doctors gave her and would be given to those 12 and older, (I’m guessing that she is closer physically to a 12 year old than a ten year old), she’d be near the top of the transplant list, but because she is only 10 years old, she is way down the list for an adult lung based only on the fact that some adults who are less sick have been on the wait list longer.
http://www.unos.org/docs/Lung_Patient.pdf\
http://www.childrenshospital.org/az/Site1250/mainpageS1250P1.html
There are sometimes very hard choices to be made when many more people need organ transplants than there are organs available, that I understand. And I’m not saying that cute little girls just because they are cute little girls and their parents are media savvy and get public and media attention and who bring lawsuits, should be given priority over those in greater need or that a scoring system, a scoring system that while it may seem cruel to those who don’t score high enough and have to wait or for those that don’t qualify for a lung transplant because they may have or had cancer or are obese or had been smokers within the last year of their diagnosis, or are 65 or older or any number of objective medically based determining factors that determines who is the best and most deserving candidate based on need and likely best outcome, isn’t necessary. But it seems to me that setting an arbitrary age criteria, without any respect to other medically verifiable criteria, makes no sense. If she has been determined to be a good candidate for an adult lung and her allocation score puts her near the top of the list; that is where she should be, not on the bottom of the adult lung waiting list simply because some who are much less sick have been waiting longer or because some bureaucrats rather than medical professionals determine that the cutoff age is 12.
You got the story wrong .
The transplant Doctors made the request but federal guidelines prevented the person from being on the list .
The federal guidelines are dated and created 30 years ago and even updated for modern technology and body types.
Insurance companies use these federal guidelines as an excuse to not pay for
Not everyone in the transplant list will be compatible with each lung available .
It a good thing to modernize theses lists for children
From Rush Limbaugh transcript:
“I lit a cigar in honor of Sarah Palin right as the program began.
Death panels. Just exactly what Sarah Palin said, exactly what we all knew. Obamacare establishes death panels, and right now Sebelius is it.
And that’s what Obamacare says. I don’t know how many times it says it in there, but the phrase “as the secretary shall determine,” meaning the secretary of Health and Human Services.
Well, Sebelius has determined a 10-year-old doesn’t get the lung.
She doesn’t get a lung transplant ‘cause she is 10 years old, and you have to be 12 to get a lung transplant under the current regulations.
Her congressman has begged Sebelius to waive the regulation, but she has refused.
The congressman’s a Republican. Of course Sebelius would refuse.
But I remember how people laughed. I remember how the media said, “Ah, you Republicans, ah, you conservatives, you’re just over the top. There aren’t any death panels. What are you talking about?”
Look, I’m not even gonna sit here and say that Sebelius is wrong not to not intervene, but they’re death panels.
The government’s making the decision who lives and dies. “
The child doesn’t fit the criteria of the adult list to begin with. The cut off age of 12 is because the average adult lung does not fit the average child under the age of 12.
They didn’t pick that criteria out of thin air and the courts have no business second guessing the expertise of the transplant board.
apparently there have been medical advances since 2005 when the boards standards were last updated.
The guidelines are not 30 years old. The OPTB is 30 years old. The lung guidelines were last updated in 2005-6.
I don’t know if they have enough new data that indicates a change is needed.
Wow ! common sense and some compassion wins the day.
But from the articles I’m reading that’s what they are doing now...whoever has the best match and chances of surviving...especially for lung transplants, which appear to be very different from kidney and other organs.
Why does the government manage a scarce resource? That’s a recipe for shortages and death.
>> the expertise of the transplant board.
What a good Obamacare tool you’ll make.
It was bureaucracy that took it on the chin, not the experts.
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