Unfair Liver Transplant
Steve Jobs just received a liver transplant, after being diagnosed with (and receiving treatment for) pancreatic cancer in 2004. It is generally considered unethical to treat metastatic cancers with organ transplants because once cancer has metasticized, it can recur in newly transplanted organs--cheating non-cancer patients with better odds of long term survival out of organs. I want to know when that hospital in Tennessee will be receiving their Steve Jobs wing.
We wanted a liver transplant for Elizabeth. I volunteered to be a living donor. They wouldn't do it because once cancer is metastatic (meaning it is no longer confined to the original organ--which it sounds like Jobs' cancer spread to his liver causing his need for a transplant) it will undoubtedly crop back up in another organ. Mr. Jobs somehow was able to get approval for a surgery that we couldn't get approval for--with a much younger, healthier (at the time) patient, and a living donor. We wouldn't have needed to be on a list waiting for someone to die to use donated organs. And every doctor we asked (at both CHLA and UCLA) refused saying it just isn't done. Metastatic cancer patients DO NOT receive organ transplants. It is unethical in the medical community. I guess it is unethical unless you are Steve Jobs. I am furious. I guess money does buy everything. If only I had the money to have bought Elizabeth a liver transplant.
I never liked apple anyway. Macs suck.
posted by The Hill Family @ 7:56 PM
2 Comments:
Amen to that! Perfect example of the flaws in our healthcare system I guess.
It seems so unfair doesn't it...I understand the sense of injustice, but also it's not Steve Jobs' fault. He too has family and friends who love and care for him. And I guess at the end of the day, it's the doctors and the medical ethics committees or whoever are the people "at the top" who make these decisions, who really have to answer to criticism. All the time, people have to face unjust decisions...here in the UK, depending on where you live, gives you better access to medical treatment. How can that be fair? To have cancer and need a drug and be told it's too expensive so you can't have it, and then know that the man down the road from you, who happens to live in a different medical borough, where they do fund the treatment, is going to get it, and you will have to spend your remaining days dwindling away, listening to the sound of his laughter. But is it his fault...no, it's the politicians and the hospital beauracrats who make the decisions...maybe they don't know what it's like to watch a loved one die and feel helpless and I hope to goodness that they never do. Peace be with you. Cx
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