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quote:The story of Anthony Stokes was supposed to have a happy ending. Instead it ended Tuesday, police say, with the teen heart transplant recipient carjacking someone, burglarizing a home, shooting at an elderly woman, leading police on a high speed chase and then dying after his car hit a pole. Articles from 2 years ago quote:been added to the list for a heart transplant. I think this raises some interesting but troubling questions about morality and ethics. Should Anthony have been denied the heart? We know the ultimate result was a net negative. The young man went on to waste his life, harm others, and ultimately died with a heart that could have gone to someone else. But the people who advocated for him didn't know that at the time. Was it just, given the knowledge they had at the time? The SCLC advocated on his behalf, when he was 15. At the time, he had a history of getting in to fights at school. They even tried to link him to a mentor. I actually am not sure what the right thing to have done was. So many children are headed in the same direction. And some of them do make it. With the right combination of supervision, parenting, mentoring, and that pesky "free will" if that is even a thing. I worry that the next Anthony will be rejected for a transplant who could have turned his life around. There is also the inequality factor of how he got to be a bad kid in the first place. Perhaps its because he didn't have the same opportunities as children with better luck, not living in poverty. And where was the parent? How in the gently caress was he allowed to be unsupervised and able to get a gun? Who gave him a gun? Should we be deciding that kids with emotional and behavior disabilities should be given the automatic death sentence of being denied a transplant? Would we will that standard for everyone with a disability?
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# ? Apr 3, 2015 03:05 |
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# ? May 16, 2024 17:33 |
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Did this black teenager really deserve a heart that could have gone to a 90 year old white millionaire who made his fortune off the backs of east Asian slave labor? makes u think
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# ? Apr 3, 2015 03:18 |
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Schizotek posted:Did this black teenager really deserve a heart that could have gone to a 90 year old white millionaire who made his fortune off the backs of east Asian slave labor? makes u think Yeah, Dick Cheney would have sailed right through.
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# ? Apr 3, 2015 03:23 |
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There is a standing question about whether right and wrong should be based on consequences or if it should be based on rules that you don't break. I've been thinking more about it and I just cannot in good conscience sentence a teen to death by denying him a heart transplant on the basis that he is a delinquent. It wouldn't be the Christian thing to do. And supposing the teen survived the carjacking incident, its really unlikely we would put him to death, a lengthy prison sentence to be sure but not death. His crimes were stupid but not worth dying over.
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# ? Apr 3, 2015 05:12 |
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Mandy Thompson posted:
quote:People who receive transplants must adhere to strict medication regimens to keep their bodies from rejecting the organs. A person can be disqualified if hospital officials think the patient won’t stick to that regimen, has no support system or an inability to pay for expensive anti-rejection medicines. Race-baiting activists made it such a polarized issue that the hospital ended up reversing their decision. Sometimes, the correct decision is the unpleasant and politically-incorrect one.
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# ? Apr 3, 2015 05:14 |
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there are legit way more people that need hearts than there are hearts to be given. to qualify for a heart transplant you need to have as many things going for you as possible to ensure you survive post transplant. self destructive behavior like delinquency is at odds with that, and racial activists straight-up caused a heart to be wasted here
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# ? Apr 3, 2015 05:22 |
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# ? Apr 3, 2015 05:26 |
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It's a tragedy any way you see it, and clearly there was some sort of policy failure - whether in mentor monitoring or educational reform or what-have-you. And frankly I think that there's always going to be some people who slip through the cracks, particularly with how messed up our existing system is. But I think that ultimately the take away from this should be that an organ lottery denial shouldn't be seen as a death sentence. Until we are able to replicate artificial organs there is always going to be a shortage of organ donations, which means that there are always going to be patients who die who potentially could have been saved if an organ was available. That's just a fact of life. The heart that went to this troubled guy could have saved someone else's life, but I don't think that the doctors sentenced the unlucky patient to die. One of the dangers of giving organs to young people is that their futures are so uncertain. But that is also one of the chief values of doing so. Uncertainty is part of the medical process, and that is certainly also true of older patients. I won't go so far as blaming any of the social organizations that stood up for Stokes, but I do think that organ oversight committees will take this incident as additional evidence supporting the need to screen applicants to protect the value of the donations. I looked up the statistics, and I was amazed that an estimated 21 Americans die every day while waiting for organ transplants that never come. There's some thought-provoking numbers to be sure: http://www.organdonor.gov/about/data.html Also this Twitter conversation is pretty funny. Kaal fucked around with this message at 06:49 on Apr 3, 2015 |
# ? Apr 3, 2015 05:56 |
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This thread is going places.
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# ? Apr 3, 2015 06:06 |
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With kids, like everything else, one has to consider likely return on investment
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# ? Apr 3, 2015 06:14 |
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You have to be on the straight and narrow when you're on a transplant list. No drinking, no smoking. They're really up your rear end about it. Surprised he managed to find someone to hook him up. Too bad he didn't use his second chance to turn his life around. Really lovely story.
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# ? Apr 3, 2015 06:16 |
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But did Stokes check the "organ donor" box?
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# ? Apr 3, 2015 06:40 |
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lovely story but I don't see how Stokes' criminal behavior later in life has anything to do with the decision to give him a heart transplant.
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# ? Apr 3, 2015 06:50 |
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Mandy Thompson posted:There is a standing question about whether right and wrong should be based on consequences or if it should be based on rules that you don't break. I've been thinking more about it and I just cannot in good conscience sentence a teen to death by denying him a heart transplant on the basis that he is a delinquent. It wouldn't be the Christian thing to do. And supposing the teen survived the carjacking incident, its really unlikely we would put him to death, a lengthy prison sentence to be sure but not death. His crimes were stupid but not worth dying over. Do you understand that there are a finite number of donative organs and that someone had to not recieve an organ in order for him to have one?
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# ? Apr 3, 2015 06:55 |
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Typical Pubbie posted:lovely story but I don't see how Stokes' criminal behavior later in life has anything to do with the decision to give him a heart transplant. Because he's black and had facebook pictures of him holding guns. Clear warning signs that he was a thug sleeper cell who was better off dead, but they killed someone else to save him because race baiters whined. Duh. On a serious note, I don't see any real reason for this story to become popular, except for among not-racists who will hugely exaggerate the seriousness of this one case where a dude probably didn't meet the requirements to remain on a transplant list, but stayed on anyways because of public outcry. I remember in that documentary about the gathering of the juggaloes, there was some dude who was talking about how he needed kidneys or something, but he went on this big tirade about how he was on dialysis and he was still out there throwin down, getting hosed up, and eating juggalo food. In that situation, you're like welp. Good thing you're not too concerned about getting a transplant, because you drat sure aren't getting one now. Stokes may have been in a similar situation, but even so, if juggalo kid got his kidneys anyways and then ended up overdosing on heroin, nobody would care too much about it. They're just kids. You can't expect to predict how their life will play out if they get the transplant before they've even gotten it.
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# ? Apr 3, 2015 07:02 |
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I understand that, I just don't think he should have been refused a transplant just because he got into some fights at school and had been labeled a bad kid. A disproportionate number of black students are given that label early on when white kids are not, are raised in environments that foster behavior problems, and it would create a pattern of african american students not being given heart transplants. That is not to say he might not have been denied for some other reason but as someone else has pointed out, we've been willing to give millionaire white collar career criminals hearts in well, a heartbeat. That's when they aren't buying the organs off the black market that were harvested from Chinese union organizers and Falun Gong practitioners.
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# ? Apr 3, 2015 07:03 |
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Mandy Thompson posted:That's when they aren't buying the organs off the black market that were harvested from Chinese union organizers and Falun Gong practitioners. I don't think the American Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network is responsible for those procedures.
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# ? Apr 3, 2015 07:08 |
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Typical Pubbie posted:lovely story but I don't see how Stokes' criminal behavior later in life has anything to do with the decision to give him a heart transplant. Right, well it was his criminal behavior before the transplant that doctors were considering. Some people are just pieces of poo poo. This kid was a piece of poo poo. Is it all his fault? No. His parents, society in general, plenty of blame to go around. But someone else didn't get a heart because this kid wasted his chance, just like the doctors assumed he might.
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# ? Apr 3, 2015 07:11 |
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ReidRansom posted:Right, well it was his criminal behavior before the transplant that doctors were considering. It really wasn't. It was about compliance and likely success of the operation. You don't just stick a heart in someone, sew them up and send them on their way. They need medication, followups, there's restrictions on behavior. If you're a minor, you need a guardian or caretaker who can bring you to appointments. I mean, if you're fifteen and you're already wearing an ankle monitor, it isn't exactly a good sign, but the family's spokesman back in 2013 claiming the hospital refused him 'because of his grades' and stuff was full of poo poo. I don't really blame the family - if your child was made ineligible, going to the media is a small price to pay to try and pressure the hospital - but that doesn't mean the hospital made the wrong call. It's also easy to talk about how he was a boy whose parents loved him and all this other stuff, because it is easier to sympathize with a face in a story, versus the people we don't know who were also in need of a heart. It is a weird business, trying to evaluate this sort of thing. It's easier to say 'he deserved a chance' than to say 'he deserved less of a chance than an unknown someone else who deserved a chance' because we don't know. basically, we should have opt out organ donation instead of opt in, write your congressman or something, scarcity sucks Ambivalent fucked around with this message at 07:27 on Apr 3, 2015 |
# ? Apr 3, 2015 07:20 |
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quote:Before he was old enough to drive, he was required to wear an ankle monitor. Precocious little scamp.
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# ? Apr 3, 2015 07:22 |
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Maybe it's an evil heart and whoever gets it goes insane until it's passed on to a new host?
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# ? Apr 3, 2015 07:27 |
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Seems like one of those situations where activists jumped the gun. You'll see it in basically any decentralized movement against a real injustice that can spark grassroots outcry at any time, and activists for black rights are no exception. Similar to how Michael Brown became the figurehead for abuses by police against black men, despite Brown being custom-tailored for every racist argument to have some weight relative to someone like Kenneth Chamberlain, where there's no argument to be made. It's an important fight, but you have to pick your battles, and Stokes was a bad cross to die on. It's probably going to come back to bite the overall cause now.
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# ? Apr 3, 2015 07:28 |
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The problem with deciding who to treat and who not to treat is where do we draw the line? In a capitalist society, we value worth by money. So it makes sense for the most worthy to be able to get the organs they need on the free market. Most people find this idea offensive. So, then, how do we do it? Triage based on survival should clearly play a role, people who need the organ now should be given priority over those who will need the organ sometime in the future. Likewise, it seems reasonable to prioritize those who are likely to have a long life over those who are likely to die soon of other natural causes, so we should favor the young over the elderly and the comparatively healthy over the comparatively sick. After that, how do we decide? Should a Catholic hospital (of which there are many) prioritize Catholic patients over other patients?
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# ? Apr 3, 2015 07:36 |
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wait I'm confused. These events were almost two years after the heart transplant -- is that enough time for us to say that he was compliant taking his drugs?
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# ? Apr 3, 2015 07:39 |
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Shbobdb posted:The problem with deciding who to treat and who not to treat is where do we draw the line? In a capitalist society, we value worth by money. So it makes sense for the most worthy to be able to get the organs they need on the free market. Most people find this idea offensive. So, then, how do we do it? Triage based on survival should clearly play a role, people who need the organ now should be given priority over those who will need the organ sometime in the future. Likewise, it seems reasonable to prioritize those who are likely to have a long life over those who are likely to die soon of other natural causes, so we should favor the young over the elderly and the comparatively healthy over the comparatively sick. After that, how do we decide? Should a Catholic hospital (of which there are many) prioritize Catholic patients over other patients? As far as I understand, we have a fairly complex existing system to govern exactly that issue. Perhaps there are problems within that policy, but from my perspective it seems to have been well considered. OPTN posted:More than 120,000 people in the U.S. are waiting to receive a life-giving organ transplant. We simply don't have enough donated organs to transplant everyone in need, so we balance factors of:
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# ? Apr 3, 2015 07:40 |
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Getao posted:wait I'm confused. These events were almost two years after the heart transplant -- is that enough time for us to say that he was compliant taking his drugs? apparently he was non-compliant before getting the transplant, which was part of why he was denied one originally
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# ? Apr 3, 2015 07:43 |
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While this poo poo head wasting a heart that could have saved a better person is infuriating, I'd rather have activists and people who occasionally gently caress up and champion the cause of the wrong people rather than have none to do that at all.
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# ? Apr 3, 2015 07:43 |
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murphyslaw posted:While this poo poo head wasting a heart that could have saved a better person is infuriating, I'd rather have activists and people who occasionally gently caress up and champion the cause of the wrong people rather than have none to do that at all. Pretty much, yeah.
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# ? Apr 3, 2015 07:44 |
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murphyslaw posted:While this poo poo head wasting a heart that could have saved a better person is infuriating, I'd rather have activists and people who occasionally gently caress up and champion the cause of the wrong people rather than have none to do that at all. Definitely.
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# ? Apr 3, 2015 07:45 |
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murphyslaw posted:While this poo poo head wasting a heart that could have saved a better person is infuriating, I'd rather have activists and people who occasionally gently caress up and champion the cause of the wrong people rather than have none to do that at all. Conversely the hospital should have stuck to its guns in the face of that activism. They decided that they'd rather let activists decide transplant policy than defend their own transplant policy in the media, and well it turns out the death panels may actually have some idea of what they're talking about.
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# ? Apr 3, 2015 07:47 |
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murphyslaw posted:While this poo poo head wasting a heart that could have saved a better person is infuriating, I'd rather have activists and people who occasionally gently caress up and champion the cause of the wrong people rather than have none to do that at all. Fair enough. But this a system for dealing with scarcity; championing one person necessarily denies another that resource, maybe at the cost of their life. In the justice system, sure, champion every cause, you're not taking anything away from anyone else. In this case, you are. ReidRansom fucked around with this message at 07:54 on Apr 3, 2015 |
# ? Apr 3, 2015 07:49 |
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ReidRansom posted:Fair enough. But this a system for dealing with scarcity; championing one person necessarily denies another that resource, maybe at the cost of their life. And in this case, it did, but really how many times could this have happened? I'd bet money it's 2, maybe 3 tops. Most likely just the 1. It sucks, but it's also not exactly an epidemic. In every other case I can think of, the biggest victims from a movement getting one wrong as part of an overall noble goal is the activists themselves.
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# ? Apr 3, 2015 07:54 |
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Volkerball posted:And in this case, it did, but really how many times could this have happened? I'd bet money it's 2, maybe 3 tops. Most likely just the 1. It sucks, but it's also not exactly an epidemic. In every other case I can think of, the biggest victims from a movement getting one wrong as part of an overall noble goal is the activists themselves. Well, yeah, it's not an epidemic, and it'd be better if it stayed that way by allowing the doctors who are best equipped to judge the chances of success to make the decisions. It's one of those systems that works perfectly well without any input from the public.
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# ? Apr 3, 2015 07:59 |
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Rejecting to give a heart to a 15 year old kid, no matter how lovely he is. is pretty appalling though. At 15 years old he still had plenty of time and opportunity to get a better grip on his life and change his ways. I don't see how this is news. 15 year old with a lovely life got a new heart, kept on leading a lovely life.
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# ? Apr 3, 2015 08:06 |
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The Oldest Man posted:Conversely the hospital should have stuck to its guns in the face of that activism. They decided that they'd rather let activists decide transplant policy than defend their own transplant policy in the media, and well it turns out the death panels may actually have some idea of what they're talking about. It's really a simple matter for the hospital, all they have to say is "We don't discuss patient matters with the media, check transplant-info.com to see how we make these decisions"
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# ? Apr 3, 2015 08:06 |
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Ignoring everything else, rejecting a child because of medication non-compliance seems like a bad call. That's the kind of thing that seems like it can be fixed with the right interventions.
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# ? Apr 3, 2015 08:26 |
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We really shouldn't be denying people a heart transplant because they might die in a car accident, since that's one of the most likely situations where you'll be getting the heart back. Non-compliance with rejection meds will destroy the heart of course, but this guy was obviously complying so no issues there. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 08:44 on Apr 3, 2015 |
# ? Apr 3, 2015 08:40 |
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Newspaper comments (I know) are saying it was his second transplant but the hospital couldn't say anything because of HIPAA?
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# ? Apr 3, 2015 09:39 |
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VitalSigns posted:We really shouldn't be denying people a heart transplant because they might die in a car accident, since that's one of the most likely situations where you'll be getting the heart back. Normal people dont really get into car accidents while running from cops in a stolen car. This wasn't just gee whiz bad luck
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# ? Apr 3, 2015 09:44 |
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# ? May 16, 2024 17:33 |
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Maybe we should have some literacy tests for problematic applicants to ensure that it only goes to the right people??
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# ? Apr 3, 2015 11:54 |