Questions are being raised about the case of a 36-year-old Ontario woman who died of liver failure after she was rejected for a life-saving liver transplant after a medical review highlighted her prior alcohol use.
Selkirk said she and Allan are both discussing a legal challenge to the liver transplant guidelines for those with alcohol use disorder “with people who have their own living donor.”
“It's not fair and it's not right, and hopefully we'll change that policy,” Selkirk said.
Even if her partner could donate his own liver, it should still go to a better recipient. If anything he should be donating anyways to honor her and save a life
Right? Like I would donate my liver to my kid, or my spouse, without even questioning it.
But if the doctor told me they can't have it (for some reason other than incompatibility), and they died? Fuck them. I'd de-register as an organ donor out of spite.
Donating an organ is a pretty invasive operation that can have a lot of complications, doctors aren't only taking the recipient health, but the donor too, in the equation.
You (or the committee of doctors) don't decide who is a better recipient for my goddamn organs. You can make whatever the fuck ethical decision you want when I'm dead, but not until then. And I've gotta say, it's shit like this - treating patients & donors like you know better - that make me not want to be a donor anymore. If I wanna donate my lungs to Hitler because he's my grandpa and I love him, that's not something you get to have a decision on.
It's a bit more complicated than that with transplants. Should people for example be able to sell their kidney to the highest bidder? That's also "my body, my choice". And should doctors be forced to participate in such a scheme?
A transplant system should consider fairness, equality and possible abuse. Obviously I think it should be possible to donate to a loved one, but we should also be careful not to create a system where the rich get priority, because they can pay more, and where poor people could be financially pressured to give up their bodily integrity by having to sell an organ.
Maybe he should, but maybe he is thinking "Fuck them, we tried to participate in the system. We had a living donor to go. What? Oh you have a 'better' recipient? Well, guess who doesn't want to donate to a system that failed my loved one."