Waste of a perfectly good heart

[Derec]

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

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 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?

 

[RavenSky]

I think the better question is: Would Derec have found and posted this story if it had been about a white upper or middle class guy who "wasted a perfectly good heart"?

I vote "no"

 

[Derec]

I think the better question is: Would Derec have found and posted this story if it had been about a white upper or middle class guy who "wasted a perfectly good heart"?

I vote "no"

If he wrapped himself around a traffic pole in a similar fashion (following a carjacking and robbery, not a simple accident), sure. Unless I was beaten to it by you or Athena.

 

[laughing dog]

Was this heart harvested?

 

[NobleSavage]

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

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 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.

 

[bleubird]

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

 

[untermensche]

A black kid caught up in a society at war with black kids.

A society that has wasted millions of lives.

Yet some blame the victims.

 

[Frikki]

I think the better question is: Would Derec have found and posted this story if it had been about a white upper or middle class guy who "wasted a perfectly good heart"?

I vote "no"

Are you implying that Derec is racist?

 

[RavenSky]

M

I think the better question is: Would Derec have found and posted this story if it had been about a white upper or middle class guy who "wasted a perfectly good heart"?

I vote "no"

If he wrapped himself around a traffic pole in a similar fashion (following a carjacking and robbery, not a simple accident), sure. Unless I was beaten to it by you or Athena.

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.

I think the underlying question of recipient criteria is a good one, and would have made for a good thread. Unfortunately, your emphasis on race (your little sidebar rant about Mostellar, and dragging Michael Brown into this) has ruined any chance of that.

Maximizing kidney transplant patients' long-term compliance with immunosuppressants is a major challenge to transplant coordinators. Although previous research has found substantial proportions of recipients to be noncompliant, predictors of noncompliance and characteristics of noncompliers remain unclear. In this study of more than 1400 kidney transplant patients, we found noncompliance to be associated with patient and transplant characteristics and with patient beliefs concerning the efficacy of immunosuppressants. Three distinct profiles of noncompliers were identified: accidental noncompliers, invulnerables, and decisive noncompliers. This information can be used by transplant coordinators to recognize cues that predict noncompliance and to work with at-risk patients to forestall or remedy noncompliant behavior.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10703391

 

[Mindlab Expositor]

Commodities like transplant organs are priceless. Denying a transplant to someone who has demonstrated harmful behavior toward society should be last in the list of recipients.

For me, it is not about who is worthy of life-saving medicine. It is about how we spend our limited resources.

When someone commits crimes as Stokes did they forfeit, to a certain degree, they're right to life. We remove them from us and put them in prison. However, we also concurrently remove us from from them; thereby limiting their right to life among us. Limiting a criminal's right to life is what we do already in the prison system.

Does this put us in a slippery slope? It doesn't have to no more than the prison system put us on a slippery slope.

Would we put someone first in line for a heart transplant if they had terminal cancer? Why not? It would be a waste of a precious commodity.

The review board who saw Stokes' case made the right decision in the first place.

 

[Toni]

Was this heart harvested?

Donated organs cannot be reused for another recipient. Too many risks to the new recipient.

 

[Toni]

I think the better question is: Would Derec have found and posted this story if it had been about a white upper or middle class guy who "wasted a perfectly good heart"?

I vote "no"

Or would Derec have posted if the heart recipient had turned his life around and become a model citizen? 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.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

This does seem like a wasted chance for someone to have made a life for themselves.

I look forward to Derec's future posts documenting the average and the fringe organ transplant experiences. The hits and misses. The gained and thrown away opportunities.

 

[dismal]

I think the better question is: Would Derec have found and posted this story if it had been about a white upper or middle class guy who "wasted a perfectly good heart"?

I vote "no"

We should alert the moderators. Someone suggested another poster is a racist.

 

[Frikki]

I think the better question is: Would Derec have found and posted this story if it had been about a white upper or middle class guy who "wasted a perfectly good heart"?

I vote "no"

We should alert the moderators. Someone suggested another poster is a racist.

It´s verboten to suggest that a poster is racist. To come out and say that someone sides with terrorists and want to see Israel destroyed is ok on the other hand.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

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.

 

[Derec]

Was the emphasized paragraph really necessary?

Necessary? No. But I recognized the name for another recent news story and thought it worth a mention, but not necessarily its own thread. You must admit what he said was pretty stupid, especially for a leader of an organization that prides itself on non-violence.

What is the story on heart transplants? I'm assuming there are not enough to go around?

No, there certainly aren't.

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.

I am torn on that honestly. But in Stokes' case there apparently was a history of medical non-compliance (he received a heart before which didn't take) that was the main reason for the initial rejection. That was reversed due to political pressure.
As far as medical criteria, there is a good case to be made that perhaps criminal history should not matter. But when it comes to public advocacy for a person (to reverse a medical decision) then their criminal history should definitely matter. Their race, on the other hand, should not. In the Stokes case, it was exactly the reverse.

 

[Derec]

A black kid caught up in a society at war with black kids.

You are taking "soft bigotry of low expectations" and making it an Olympic sport.

Yet some blame the victims.

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.

As long as there are many people like you willing to excuse and justify criminal behavior of blacks nothing will likely change regarding the significantly higher crime rate among blacks. And it will be mostly blacks who will continue to suffer the negative consequences of it.

 

[Derec]

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.

It is my understanding that alcoholism can negatively affect one's chance at getting on the transplant list. In other words, a candidate must convince the transplant committee that they will be compliant going forward.
That said, liver transplants are much different than a heart transplant. You can transplant only a part of somebody's liver which makes live transplants possible. That opens the possibility of a family member giving somebody a part of their liver which they would not do for a stranger which takes care of the waiting list issue and deciding between various patients.
Also I have yet to see a case where groups like SCLC advocated for a drunk to get a new liver after he was rejected medically.

I think the underlying question of recipient criteria is a good one, and would have made for a good thread. Unfortunately, your emphasis on race (your little sidebar rant about Mostellar, and dragging Michael Brown into this) has ruined any chance of that.

There are several themes in this case. General question of deciding transplants is one. But race also plays a role as Stokes was only allowed onto the transplant list because of race-based advocacy.
I already explained my inclusion of Mostellar's ridiculous rant above.

 

[Derec]

Or would Derec have posted if the heart recipient had turned his life around and become a model citizen?

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".