Anthony Stokes became a cause célèbre in 2013 when he was turned down for a heart transplant because of his “history of non-compliance” from juvenile delinquency to low grades to other bad habits. A public campaign led to a reversal of the decision and he received the heart transplant recently. He is now dead after going on a crime spree, including the attempted shooting of an elderly woman and running over a pedestrian.
On Tuesday, Stokes took his new heart out for a crime spree that began with a carjacking at a mall. He then kicked in the door of a home and burglarizing it. He then fired a shot at an elderly woman who was able to call police. He then took the police on a high-speed chase where he hit a pedestrian and then a pole.
At the time of the transplant controversy, the family spokesman Mark Bell objected to the doctor’s criteria and said “I guess he didn’t think Anthony was going to be a productive citizen.” The objections to the denial raised valid question of the criteria used in such cases in terms of the predictive “positive” contribution of a recipient.
While it seems the center’s “contraindications” proved prophetic in this case, there remains the question of whether doctors should make such judgments based on a recipient’s character or social record as opposed to age and health.
Excellent, and in bold:
issac…
As a veteran, I submit two letters to refute your “single payer utopia”…
VA
The horrific stories presented in the media regarding corruption and bureaucratic malfeasance in the Veterans Administration Healthcare system over the past couple of years don’t even begin to scratch the surface.
It is NOT the healthcare providers themselves that are the problem. The vast majority of the doctors and nurses are dedicated professionals who want to properly care for patients. However, their hands are tied by administrators and bureaucrats who cannot be held accountable and who work to serve the bureaucracy instead of caring for patients.
It would be a travesty to subject the population at large to such treatment.
As related to this current thread… The medical professionals got it right from the start. To give this patient a donor heart would ultimately be a very bad decision. They were right, of course. Yet they were overruled by political correctness.
“But, what will the criteria be?”
Likelihood of survival.
For this young man, noncompliance was felt to be likely, and they were right.
For alcoholics, often 6 months of abstinence is required before they’ll let you get an organ.
here’s how they do it in Canada:
9 ways to jump the health care queue
When dealing with your health, you don’t want to have to wait. Here are 9 simple ways you can speed up your health care service.
“Anita Levin’s first child, Molly, was born with a ventricular septal defect – a heart condition that requires surgery. Molly was put on a long waiting list at Toronto’s SickKids hospital, but when her turn arrived, she was ill and doctors couldn’t operate. “We had to go back on the waiting list for another six months,” says Anita.””
What a great system!
Poorly worded. The “tongue in cheek” was about the Cheetos, not about Brokaw.
Trooper, Great point about Mickey Mantle and I’ll add David Crosby. Now, the Mick died shortly after the liver transplant from cancer. But, Crosby lives on. I see judgments being made on who gets organs. They have to be made. But, what will the criteria be? If you smoked, do you not get an organ? If you ate red meat, do you not get a new heart? If you ate Cheetos? This is tongue in cheek, but just slightly. I will never forget the pompous, Tom Brokaw, ostensibly doing a tribute to an old time NBC reporter who died. This was back about 15-20 years ago. He said the usual nice things then @ the end added the fact that the reporter liked to eat steak and drink martini’s, contributing to his death. I was shocked @ the comment. Do you think a lifestyle choice would have been mentioned if he died of AIDS?
The proof of politicization is this very case.
Insurance coverage was based not on a medical decision but on a political one.
That gets worse as we move toward single payer.
Hell, we politicize pizza.
Repeat: …”the real economic cost of delivering health-insurance benefits under a single-payer system would be substantially greater—at a minimum, roughly double—than that under the current private system.“
1. Buy insurance…
” market will bear, “Sorry, your son doesn’t have coverage for that life saving operation. Park him over there.”
No.
All resources are limited, scarce.
Historically, the most efficient and fair solution has been to let the market answer our needs.
Market solution:
1. But insurance. Insurance coverage varies from catastrophic only to all the bells and whistles, according to your desires and finances.
2. Welfare processes for the poor.
State solution:
1. The state decides what you get and what you’ll pay. No choice.
2. There will be favorites; the state will inevitably politicize all health care choices.
3. There will be favorites: some people will be more equal than others. It is inevitable.
4. Administrative costs explode, not for the state, but for everyone dealing with the state. The state merely passes on the administrative costs, they do not go away. Then the state gets to say they have low admin costs. It’s a complete lie.
Comparing Public and Private Health Insurance: Would A Single-Payer System Save Enough to Cover the Uninsured?
Benjamin Zycher, Senior Fellow, Manhattan Institute for Policy Research
What does that have to do with a precious heart being squandered on a criminal?
Nothing. It is just the same old distraction from the actual topic. Bring up some random thing that happened almost 30 years ago and it is supposed to prove some sort of point about something.
Anything to keep the topic derailed. And Koch Brothers !!!!!
What does that have to do with a precious heart being squandered on a criminal?
What a liar. All that guy had to do is go to the emergency room and they have to treat him. It doesn’t matter. He can just pretend to be an illegal immigrant and he will get the best treatment that hospital has to offer. What a load of crap.
Pogo
What exactly are you saying? ‘all’ decisions will be politicized, as opposed to live if you can afford it, go into debt to pay insurance premiums based on what the market will bear, “Sorry, your son doesn’t have coverage for that life saving operation. Park him over there.”
Actually happened on the PCH in ’86, man pulls over with chest pains, wife runs to telephone booth to call ambulance, man stops her saying ‘don’t call an ambulance’, man dies of heart attack, man did not have health insurance, wife later stated that they made the choice between mortgage payments and health insurance which were approximately the same because of the man’s health risks.
Now for a different scenario, one that existed in all the other countries and still exists there at this time. Man and family have affordable health care insurance, they all pay into the same program run by the government, the savings of not having 1,200 different companies and five times the administrative costs equate to lower premiums, man has no financial problem keeping him from going to the doctor for regular checkups, taking appropriate medicine, and lives a long life, and keeps his house. Yeah, Obama has it all wrong. Yup, Yup, Yup.
@Pogo
Speaking of transgenders, I came across this website while reading an article somewhere, I forget where. This guy’s mom or aunt or grandmother(?) used to dress him up like a girl, because that was what she wanted, and he ended up later in life getting changed to female, and then changed back. His shrink admitted that he had misdiagnosed him. Anyway, it’s interesting:
http://www.sexchangeregret.com/
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
I remember when Mickey Mantle got a new liver. I thought that was wrong because he was just going to continue to abuse his body.
Isaac is saying that being right is racist.
Under Obamacare, all health care decisions will be politicized.
So you’ll see funding of gender reassignment surgeries given precedence over the treatment of childhood leukemias.
The haves and have nots will be separated by politics and power rather than money.
But there will be haves and have nots.
It is inevitable, because it has already happened in the UK and Canada.
I recall that the hospital also stated that his past history cast doubt on whether he would follow the strict guidelines necessary for his new heart.
This is another very difficult topic to get any consensus. The medical community is faced with a long list of people who will literally die, quickly, without organ transplants. How do they decide? Does a 10 year old girl deserve it more than a 13 year old with a criminal history? Would the troubled teen use his miracle to change his life around and make a difference? Would he even follow the necessary protocol, or would past history predict future and he would just waste it? These are the kind of decisions that must be incredibly difficult to make.
I feel very sorry for Stokes’ mother. She may have hoped that this transplant would turn her son around. To see him continue to slide downward must have been terrible. It’s very difficult to see people, especially young people, use all their energy to destroy their own future. What was wrong with this teen that he would shoot at an elderly lady? Why would he think that would elevate him among his peers? Is there a culture problem among criminals where cowardly behavior has somehow been reversed to admirable? Are these teens not learning values growing up, or losing them under peer pressure?
Of course, I’m too old to be considered a good donor. 🙂 But the same would be true if it were my child or grandchildren or anyone else that I am close to and whom I love.
I reserve the right to chose and I do not chose to give life to someone who has no respect for it.