But it was more than that. For her to die from cancer that quickly, it had to already be active in the donor’s lungs. Taking your chances with a smoker’s lungs is one thing; bringing in an active tumor is quite another.
So you have a risk / reward choice here. Do you take the lungs now, knwing they come from a smoker and could possibly lead to cancer down the road, or do you pass and possibly die waiting for a better set later? The problem here is that the medical team took it on themselves to make the choice, they never informed the patient of the history of those lungs. I guess they figured these are clinically healthy lungs, the risk of cancer is there but small and most likely years away and this was her best chance to survive in the near term so no need to even discuss it. Probably they also know that organs don't last long outside the body and if you tell patients "look, this guy smoked" many will say no thanks, and the organs might be lost. So they kept that info to themselves.
Sadly, the cancer did come and it came right away. Really bad luck, statistically speaking but if the patient had been informed and decided to risk it, she took her best chance knowing the risks. But in this case she didn't know the risks, she was denied the ability to make an informed decision and that is wrong.