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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 |
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Apr 3, 2015 05:56
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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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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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Xandu posted: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. Whether we're talking about this specific patient, or a hypothetical patient that doesn't have a juvenile record, I disagree. I'd assume that multiple interventions were attempted before making the difficult decision to deprioritize a child on the heart transplant list. I think that it's rather unfair to assume that the administrators did anything other than agonize over the decision and do what they could to avoid labeling him non-compliant. But doctors can't control patient actions once they leave the hospital, and making decisions based on medically-relevant patient history and behavior is acceptable and indeed expected. And for what it's worth, it appears that the organizations involved did attempt to set him up with a mentor organization and perform other post-surgical quality of life interventions.
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Apr 3, 2015 16:48
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Popular Thug Drink posted:Let's be sure to invoke as many theoretical innocent white teenagers as possible in order to really ratchet up the outrage about this dumb criminal teenager who for some mysterious reason has become a lightning rod for people to whine about political correctness. The mysterious reason is the other nameless patient who died so that Stokes could get his organ transplant. Who, since this is Atlanta we're talking about, was probably also black.
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Apr 3, 2015 16:51
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Adventure Pigeon posted:Have any studies been done indicating that there could be a racial bias in who receives organ transplants? That kinda seems what the important question is. No amount of going back and forth over this particular case should affect actual organ transplant procedures, except maybe in the future hospitals will be less likely to be pressured by activists. I took a quick look at the issue, and like most other things related to this topic: It's complicated. Federal law prohibits racial-profiling in organ placement, but at the same time there is a higher chance of organ matching between people of the same race. Simultaneously, some racial minorities are more likely to need organ transplants than others, while also being less likely to donate organs. The most extreme and sensitive example here is in the African-American population: NCBI posted:African-Americans comprise 12.9% of the population and 34% of the kidney transplant waiting list but only 13.8% of deceased donors. Barriers to minority deceased donation include: decreased awareness of transplantation, religious or cultural distrust of the medical community, fear of medical abandonment and fear of racism. Furthermore, African-Americans comprise only 11.8% of living donors. Barriers to minority living donation include: unwillingness to donate, medical comorbid conditions, trust or fear of medical community, loss to follow-up, poor coping mechanisms, financial concerns, reluctance to ask family members and friends, fear of surgery, and lack of awareness about living donor kidney transplantation. These problems complicate the issue in many ways, and prohibit a clear understanding of what systemic biases exist (if any) and how they might be rectified. http://www.organdonor.gov/whydonate/minorities.html http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2954674/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21415828 Mandy Thompson posted:I'm making a joke
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Apr 3, 2015 18:07
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Schizotek posted:12.9% of the population but only 13.8% of current donors. Why does the way that's put rankle me? I have trouble perceiving it as racism necessarily. But only donating at a higher rate than the national average is kinda bizarrely put, even if it's only 7% higher than the average. That's because the study is dividing donations up between deceased donors and living donors (which is normal practice within the industry). It's a bit confusing when you first realize what they're saying. The comparison is between the percentage of donators (~13%) and the percentage of patients (34%). African-Americans donate slightly above their population-percentage when deceased, and slightly below when living. It comes across as a wash. The problem is the disparity between what is needed and what is available, which worsens organ shortages and distorts the statistics. This is then catalyzed by the regional aspect of organ donations, since many organs (particularly hearts and lungs) cannot survive being flown around the country. So Atlanta, for example, has a larger black population and so it would be expected that kidneys in particular would be in short supply. As such you're going to have a significant number of black patients who are unable to receive organ transplants there, whereas a white patient in Atlanta might find it significantly easier to get a kidney transplant due to less competition in organ matching. That looks pretty bad, but how much of that problem can be blamed on racial-profiling? I don't know, perhaps some but I couldn't quantify it in a systematic way. This issue is something that doctors and administrators are trying to address, but it remains a critical concern. Kaal fucked around with this message at 19:07 on Apr 3, 2015 |
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Apr 3, 2015 18:40
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:Can organs be donated twice? Like say if I got a new liver because my old one was wrecked in an industrial accident or something that wasn't my direct fault (i.e. I wasn't Mickey Mantle), could I "pass it forward" when I died? As far as I know it depends on the organ, but the trauma imposed by repeated surgery and the effects from medicinal regimes would probably make it a poor candidate. Dazzling Addar posted:Teenage delinquency is not sufficient grounds for a death sentence Deprioritizing someone from a transplant list is not a death sentence, in the same way that rejecting a patient from a medical trial is not a death sentence. Doctors do the best they can, but selecting the best candidates for a scarce treatment is triage, not execution. Or else those doctors become equally responsible for "murdering" the nameless heart patient that could have used Stokes' heart but was lower on the priority list. A big flaming stink posted:The people who claimed discrimination against Stokes share blame for the heart going to waste, but everyone posting about a thug wasting a second chance are just revealing their own bigotry. (Though loving seriously, where the gently caress were the people that worked themselves into a furor to get Stokes on the transfer list when he needed help after he got the heart to change his living situation? It smacks of Republicans being obsessed about the life of an unborn fetus, but the moment it passes through the birth canal it can get hosed) According to the Christian advocacy group that spearheaded the effort to get him his heart, they connected him with a mentoring organization but lost direct contact after the surgery was successful. Unless you expect them to perform constant oversight for years afterward, it sounds to me like they did their due diligence. I mean it's not like Stokes was wandering down the hospital corridors with a gun in hand stealing clipboards - regardless of his actions outside of the medical environment, I'm sure he was just a normal patient while under their care. Certainly if I was in charge of their organization, I'd have thought that resources would be better spent helping other people in need, rather than babysitting one person for political reasons. Kaal fucked around with this message at 00:24 on Apr 4, 2015 |
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Apr 4, 2015 00:16
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This thread is attracting terrible posters like flies to honey.
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Apr 4, 2015 04:00
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I'm enjoying how the D&D radicals are unironically complaining about trained medical experts for implementing federally mandated, racially- and fiscally-blind queue systems, which they are effectively labeling death panels. Instead they seem to be supporting religious organizations using their political weight to instill favoritism. You know, because that's so progressive rather than just being politically expedient for this one kid. 
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Apr 4, 2015 22:49
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TheImmigrant posted:Maybe race isn't a consideration for everyone here. No he's just an idiot living in a constructed world. It's already been made pretty clear that if Stokes hadn't gotten the heart transplant it would have gone to another person in the Atlanta area, which statistically would have been another young black person - only one without a religious organization to use their political weight to push them to the top of the transplant list. There's already a good national system for organizing transplantation candidates that is overseen by dedicated professionals. Liberals should be supporting it as a classic example of American technocratic progressivism, rather than joining the conservatives in making up stories about death panels and encouraging nepotism. Kaal fucked around with this message at 01:16 on Apr 5, 2015 |
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Apr 5, 2015 01:06
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Alastor_the_Stylish posted:If only we could go back in time and eliminate all mentions of race from the initial articles about the transplant denial and the articles about his death and then see if we get any responses more polarizing than "it's a difficult and tragic situation all around." I think that the key thing to consider is that if Stokes had been a troubled white kid using his church connections to get pushed to the top of the heart transplantation list, ahead of a bunch of black kids, then people would have not been nearly as willing to join his bandwagon. But when a black kid does the exact same thing, vaulting over the heads of a bunch of black kids, suddenly it became about getting a run in for the home team regardless of the cost. So clearly race played a pretty significant element in how the story played out in the media. I don't mind a little political theatre, but it's a pity that the system got undermined, a heart got wasted, and some innocent kid had to die for it. Kaal fucked around with this message at 01:28 on Apr 5, 2015 |
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Apr 5, 2015 01:22
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Hodgepodge posted:Well, the public pressure brought to light the fact that the primary medical reason for the decision (his record of compliance with doctors' orders) was incorrect. [Citation Needed] And good luck because all that information is tied up under the HIPAA Act until 50 years after his death. Parents complaining to their church leaders who then lean on doctors to make medical decisions is not the kind of "public oversight" that this country needs. Theocratic favoritism is not a progressive ideal, even when the immediate outcome means a troubled black kid gets what he needs. Kaal fucked around with this message at 01:47 on Apr 5, 2015 |
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Apr 5, 2015 01:40
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Strudel Man posted:Man, he really had a thing for selfies with guns and stupid hats. Hey that's just bigotry, he had selfies without stupid hats: 
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Apr 5, 2015 01:54
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Hodgepodge posted:Several reasons have been given for the decision; only one medical. Although some digging reveals that the decision was made on the basis of non-compliance with the legal system, not with doctors' orders. So the doctor made a call based not on medical facts, but on his personal assessment of the social worth of this patients' life. That should not be something anyone is comfortable with a doctor making, especially someone with progressive ideals. Again, [Citation Needed]. Unless you're just quoting the parents, who made that accusation to attract the media but never substantiated it in any way. quote:Many public organizations are religious, and within the black community many of the most prominent and accessible sources of advocacy are religious. Are you saying that an institution should be automatically disqualified from public discourse because it is religious? Are you seriously suggesting that religious organizations should be getting involved in medical policy? Should people start getting wealthy patrons to ensure they have access to medical care? Exactly how far back do you want to turn the clock on progressive ideals in your quest to defend this kid?
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Apr 5, 2015 01:59
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VitalSigns posted:Wow those photos really frighten you huh? Lol you are so out of touch with the 21st century. These photos are just some idiot kid trying to impress his buddies. But it's hilarious that he apparently didn't take any other kind of photo.
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Apr 5, 2015 02:06
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semper wifi posted:The guy's 17 years old carjacking people and shooting at grannies, it's a reasonable assumption. And a "gangbanger" doesn't have to actually be in a gang. To be fair, he was also getting into trouble with the law at 15 and 16, and probably before that. I mean character-wise he's pretty easy to trash. He walked into the hospital with an ankle monitor because of getting into fights. But the truth is that I knew lots of people as a kid who got into trouble with the law one way or another. That aspect of his life doesn't really bother me much, outside of how it negatively impacted the success rate of the transplantation as compared to another candidate.
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Apr 5, 2015 02:16
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Hodgepodge posted:It may be obvious to you that he was a "piece of trash," but the doctor looked at a kid with a juvie record and bad grades and decided that this was sufficient cause to deny lifesaving treatment. Are you planning on simply repeating this over and over in the hopes that you'll make it true? There is no evidence that the doctors did anything of the kind. The only information available is that the board denied him access to the waiting list due to a history of noncompliance, and then later put him on the waiting list after the parents and a Christian organization spearheaded a public outcry. If we're at the point in the thread where posters just start stating opinions as fact for a lack of insight or further information then the thread has truly taken its course.
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Apr 5, 2015 02:26
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Hodgepodge posted:The hospital sent the parents a letter explaining the decision. Yes and the letter states clearly that the decision was based on a history of non-compliance. Here's the letter: http://genius.com/2091762/Childrens...-non-compliance Hodgepodge posted:Um yes? Religious organizations were prominent opponents of eugenics, for example, and I don't see any reason why religious organizations should be barred from public advocacy. You seem to think there is some fundamental opposition between religion and progressive politics. That assumption is ignorant. Well I don't share your faith in the benefits of religious intimidation and theocratic favoritism. Strong-arming a hospital to select a specific patient in lieu of another goes way beyond "public advocacy". Kaal fucked around with this message at 02:40 on Apr 5, 2015 |
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Apr 5, 2015 02:35
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