Waste of a perfectly good heart

[AthenaAwakened]

Playing the God Game

I started a thread in the Morality forum about the whys and wherefores of choosing who gets to live and who gets to die.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

Most probably, given that this is a local case for me. For example, I happened to be within a mile of the accident site just a few hours after it happened.

Highly doubtful, except to post that there is no discrimination against blacks but rather for blacks as this kid got both a new heart AND a slot at a university which he obviously didn't deserve and only got because of affirmative action.

Well affirmative action is racial discrimination but that is not the theme of this thread. I happen to think racial discrimination is wrong whether it happens against or for a particular racial group. I guess that makes me a "racist" under the NewSpeak definition of "racism".

Nothing makes you a racist Derec...

Except you.

Are you a racist?

If the answer is no, then there is nothing else to say.

If the answer is yes, then there is nothing more to say.

But either way, you can't control what people think about the posts you make. People form opinions and things once written down, become part of an ongoing record. People get to read that record and the posts, whether they are posted by a racist or not, can themselves be judged as racist and can be judged so with some legitimacy.

 

[SimpleDon]

I August 2013 a teen made the news because he was denied a heart transplant because the doctors did not believe he was likely to be compliant with the post-op treatment due in part to his brushes with the law and bad grades but mostly due to previous history of ignoring doctors' instructions. But due to a media campaign he received his heart after all.
Dying teen added to heart transplant list after family's plea
I even think there was a thread on it on the old forum but I could not find it.

So what did he do with this second chance at life? Funny you should ask. He apparently robbed an old lady, jacked a car and wrapped said car around a pole, killing himself in the process and wasting the perfectly good heart he got.
Teen heart transplant recipient killed in police chase

When Stokes' family was trying to get him a heart, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference advocated for the teen.

SCLC's the Rev. Samuel Mosteller told CNN that he was disappointed. "We got this young man a second chance in life," he said.

I wonder if SCLC would have advocate on behalf of another transplant seeker with a similar history.

snip drifting off of the subject....​

Why mention race at all? It doesn't seem at all pertinent See my edits above. I removed the references to race, 2 pl's.

 

[dismal]

The victims here is the person he carjacked, the woman he robbed and the pedestrian he hit. He was not the victim here. He is the perpetrator.

That's not the unique issue here.

Somewhere there is someone who didn't get a heart because normal protocols weren't followed.

This would have been true regardless, but this incident highlights the reason for the protocols existing in the first place.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

No you wouldn't. Because frankly this is a rather common story - people who have received transplants but continue their old ways and die anyway. Alcoholism is probably the most common example. A white guy receives a liver transplant, goes back to drinking and destroys the new liver too.

Except they require you to be sober for some months if alcoholism fried your old liver.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Assessing compliance for potential transplant recipients is important because if a patient doesn't strictly take all required medicines as directed, he or she could die within weeks of leaving the hospital, said Dr. Ryan Davies, a cardiothoracic surgeon at the Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children in Wilmington, Delaware, told CNN.

Looks like he got his second chance and blew up. Probably thought he was indestructible, damn yooths.

Damn what?

 

[Nice Squirrel]

The victims here is the person he carjacked, the woman he robbed and the pedestrian he hit. He was not the victim here. He is the perpetrator.

That's not the unique issue here.

Somewhere there is someone who didn't get a heart

Do we know this? I went to look it up, but got distracted.

 

[Malintent]

I August 2013 a black teen made the news because he was denied a heart transplant because the doctors did not believe he was likely to be compliant with the post-op treatment due in part to his brushes with the law and bad grades but mostly due to previous history of ignoring doctors' instructions. But due to a media campaign he received his heart after all.
Dying teen added to heart transplant list after family's plea
I even think there was a thread on it on the old forum but I could not find it.

So what did he do with this second chance at life? Funny you should ask. He apparently robbed an old lady, jacked a car and wrapped said car around a pole, killing himself in the process and wasting the perfectly good heart he got.
Teen heart transplant recipient killed in police chase


I wonder if SCLC would have advocated on behalf of a white transplant seeker with a similar history.

By the way, Mosteller got into hot water for calling on black people to arm themselves in response to recent police shootings. Really? Michael Brown should have been armed when he robbed a store and attacked a cop? Nicholas Thomas should have packed heat at work while serving probation for a felony to "defend" himself against police who sought to arrest him of probation violation? Anthony Hill should have been naked except for a gun while having his psychotic episode? What would guns have helped in any of these situations except to make the cases much more clear cut and unambiguous but on the downside possibly also had a few dead cops?

Anyhow, the Anthony Stokes case raises a question. When faced with very scarce organs like hearts, what criteria other than medical should be used? Should one's criminal record be considered? It certainly looks like the first judgment was the right one and PC and media inspired campaign was flawed to put it mildly. Note the likelihood that somebody else might have died because the heart that otherwise would have gone to them has gone into Stokes instead. What is the family of this person feeling hearing this news?

Was the emphasized paragraph really necessary?

What is the story on heart transplants? I'm assuming there are not enough to go around? If that is the case, then there has to be selection criteria. However, I don't like the idea of taking past criminal behavior into account. That just seems like a very bad idea.

apart from the medical evaluation between two candidates, related to the chances of success of the transplant, what other selection criteria SHOULD there be, in your opinion?

Age?
Financial position?
history of charitable contributions?
Career?
Race?
sex?
political connections?

 

[ksen]

Dick Cheney's heart.
Waste?
http://www.salon.com/2013/11/14/dick_cheney_even_bigger_monster_than_you_thought/

trick question, cheney has no heart

 

[Malintent]

That's not the unique issue here.

Somewhere there is someone who didn't get a heart

Do we know this? I went to look it up, but got distracted.

Yes.
for every available heart, there are many, many potential recipients.
There is a waiting list.

So, a middle-aged professional that does not smoke, has a documented history of contributing to society, no criminal history, etc... is going to be higher on the list than a homeless person with conjunctivitis, alcoholism, and a history of mental health issues.

 

[dismal]

That's not the unique issue here.

Somewhere there is someone who didn't get a heart

Do we know this? I went to look it up, but got distracted.

If there is a scarcity of hearts that requires the use of prioritization protocols then yes, of course him getting this heart means someone else didn't.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

Do we know this? I went to look it up, but got distracted.

If there is a scarcity of hearts that requires the use of prioritization protocols then yes, of course him getting this heart means someone else didn't.

But what if he was the only recipient ready for this particular heart? Then it would make sense he could receive it. I doubt it is the case but I wonder.

 

[dismal]

If there is a scarcity of hearts that requires the use of prioritization protocols then yes, of course him getting this heart means someone else didn't.

But what if he was the only recipient ready for this particular heart? Then it would make sense he could receive it. I doubt it is the case but I wonder.

If he was the only possible recipient I don't think he would have had to wage a media campaign to get the protocols for allocating hearts ignored in order to get it.

 

[laughing dog]

I think there is ample evidence that there are lots of examples of functioning aortas going to waste.

 

[coloradoatheist]

I think there is ample evidence that there are lots of examples of functioning aortas going to waste.

Do heart transplants have a waiting list?

 

[laughing dog]

I think there is ample evidence that there are lots of examples of functioning aortas going to waste.

Do heart transplants have a waiting list?

Yes, they do. But my observation is true even if there is no waiting list.

 

[coloradoatheist]

Do heart transplants have a waiting list?

Yes, they do. But my observation is true even if there is no waiting list.

Maybe, but it depends on certain things. The question regarding heart transplants is if the problem with the waiting list is from not enough people dying in the right way, or not enough peeople saying they would donate their heart after they die.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

That's not the unique issue here.

Somewhere there is someone who didn't get a heart

Do we know this? I went to look it up, but got distracted.

What's there to look up? When they get a usable organ they always transplant it--the demand way outstrips the supply. If the heart went to A then it obviously didn't go to B. Since people die on the waiting lists this means someone died because of this.

 

[Mageth]

Since people die on the waiting lists this means someone died because of this.

No it doesn't. You are asserting facts not in evidence (that "someone died because of this").

 

[Axulus]

Since people die on the waiting lists this means someone died because of this.

No it doesn't. You are asserting facts not in evidence (that "someone died because of this").

One less heart was available for someone else who also needed one. By what mechanism would that not lead to a shorter life for someone else who needed a heart? An average of 21 people die daily while on organ transplant waiting lists in the US.