Odds and statistics are the best we can do, but we use that sort of statistical screening all the time. These sorts of decisions should be backed up by solid data but one can speculate about some plausible behavioural indicators. For instance, multiple DUI convictions may be indicative of alcohol addiction. Or police records of alcohol-related domestic violence. Those may be useful red flags.
A friend of ours had a liver transplant 6 weeks ago. Initially it was to be a living donation. His son’s wife was going to give a piece of her liver. The recipient had to agree to not use alcohol ever again, and he was having trouble committing to this.
While he was hospitalized a liver became available and they rushed him to surgery. I don’t know what he is going to do with regards to alcohol, because he never agreed to abstinence. He is doing well, but is not yet feeling good enough to want a drink.
In 1994, I did clinicals on an organ transplant unit, and we had a patient who got a kidney transplant, having destroyed her own from either cocaine or meth abuse (don’t remember which) and the rule that center had regarding people like this was that they had to be “clean” before their terminal illness began.
Supreme Court of Canada denies leave to appeal.
The ethics here seems cut and dried. This is not a denial of care, it is prioritization of a limited resource. If she got the organ, somebody else would die.
I’m wondering why there has been no similar litigation in the U.S., you’d think with the politicization of vaccination somebody would have tried. Is there clear precedent that the Constitution has bearing on health care?
Interesting article. Thanks.
I liked the closing paragraph:
That seems so common sense, but I guess we’re no longer in a world where common sense is important.
Common sense has been one of the main casualties of the pandemic.
I think few medical people would think it was discriminatory not to transplant an unvaccinated patient. And even fewer surgeons.
You summed up perfectly what I was going to say.