He named and shamed her in a national newspaper for refusing to donate. I don’t suppose the sister herself volunteered her picture for that article.
From the article:“Mrs Pretty approached her sister-in-law in an attempt to change her mind but lost her temper and was eventually arrested. No charge was brought.” Sounds like bro married someone with a nasty temper as well. Sis, OTOH, has so far restrained herself by giving no comment. She also didn’t press charges when her sister in law made enough of a scene on her porch that the Police had to come in.
I’d say that at hte very least, if bro is desperate, both he and his wife sure have a nasty and inefficient way of trying to do something about it.
Meh. People choose their own minor benefit over other people’s lives all the time. You’re probably doing it right now. Why should we have a higher moral obligation to siblings than we do to everyone else? I mean, I feel intuitively that I do, but I cannot make a very rational defense of it.
My stepson needed a kidney, his sister was a match but she changed her mind after the testing. Several months later she show up on his doorstep and was ready to do it. The transplant was done in a matter of days. Since then she hits him up for money on a regular basis and never pays it back. He has the attitude that she saved his life, so he gives her whatever she wants, he complains about it, but not very much.
I don’t know what the original circumstances are but I am faintly horrified this has become news. I am disgusted that he would take such private dirty laudnry and make it public in an effort to make her change her mind. This is something that should be resolved between him and his sister and not with the whole world watching like vultures.
Well, he might have done it to win sympathy in the hopes that people would come forward to be tested to see if they’re a match. I don’t blame him, personally. I wouldn’t want to say good night if I didn’t have to, so you bet your hairy bottom I’d go down swinging.
I see it as a Good Samaritan issue, in the way Germany sees it. That is, if you want a driver’s license, you have to have basic knowledge of first aid and provide it when necessary when for instance, you come upon an accident. It’s criminal not to, assuming you’re not putting your own life in danger.
I’m not saying she should be legally compelled to donate or be held criminally liable or anything, but she took the steps to have herself tested and she knows full well withholding her assistance now is condemning her brother to death which to my mind is far worse even, than refusing to pull someone from a car wreck.
You left off the reason the sister gave for not donating.
"Jacqueline Pretty said: "She opened the front door halfway and I told her that things were desperate and the children thought their daddy was going to die. She said ‘Sorry, I am not doing it’. **I asked her to give me a reason and she said ‘I am putting my family first’. **
“I explained that there were no risks involved. I was so upset and I said, ‘Don’t you care if your brother dies?’ She said ‘It’s very sad’, and smirked.”
That was my first impression as well, although I wouldn’t necessarily blame him for it, since he is understandably desperate. IMHO, the real bad guys here are The Daily Mail. Not only did they decide to go ahead with this article, but they published her name and photo. That’s just asking for a lynch mob, or at least ostracism. And I’d bet all my life savings ($20) that there is some vital information left out of the article.
You’re probably thinking of the same case I was thinking of, that was big news maybe fifteen years ago, where a teenage girl needed bone marrow or she’d die, and her parents decided to have another child in the hopes that the second child would be able to donate marrow for the older child. There was a huge hue and cry about what a terrible thing it was to bring the second child into the world for such mercenary(?!) reasons.
I tried to find it on Google, but the story predated the Internet, I’m pretty sure.
She has a family of her own. If she doesn’t want to take the risk of harm to herself – and there is a risk to undergoing general anesthesia – that’s *her *business. She doesn’t owe her brother her bone marrow, for god’s sake! I think her brother, his wife, and this newspaper have got a hell of a lot of nerve for printing this article.
She has every right to refuse to donate her bone marrow to her brother, even if he is dying. I myself would donate bone marrow without much thought, but I’m not sure if I would feel the same if it were a kidney. I would be scared that I too would develop a problem with my kidneys or possibly have an injury damaging one or both of my kidneys.
Of course she has a right not to. It’s just sort of a lousy thing not to do it. What kind of a person wouldn’t do that for a family member? Especially since she sort of set him up to expect that she’d donate considering that she got tested. Of course there’s a risk. There’s a risk when you go to the dentist, that’s a part of life. She probably has more of a risk than driving her car than complications from donating bone marrow. Strangers donate bone marrow.
I can’t think of not doing it for one of my sisters. I couldn’t live with myself.
Hopefully you will never be in the position he and his wife are in at this very moment, and that would be in the position of having to beg for your life or for the life of the man you love and the father of your children.
I think it is fairly safe to say that the airing of “dirty laundry” is the absolute least of their worries right now.
One or more of those “vultures” watching may be a suitable match. Assuming that the average vulture isn’t too incapacitated by disgust over the airing of “dirty laundry” to go out and get tested, he may yet find a match.
I’m on the bone marrow registry and I would be privileged to donate my marrow to potentially save another human being, whether he/she was a stranger or my brother.
If the sister didn’t want to donate, then she should not have had her blood drawn to determine if she’s a match. To have her brother know that she’s a match, and then subsequently refuse to donate, is unbelievably cruel.
I wonder if the sister is phobic about medical procedures and long needles, etc. Not that that’s necessarily the case or that it would entirely excuse her if it was, but millions of people regularly jeopardize their own health by refusing to see a doctor about a problem or to get a checkup or recommended tests done.
But she had the test to determine compatibility already, which at the very least would include a needle, although I admit I’m not familiar with the procedure.
There must be some awful history between them. I can not imagine ever denying my sister (or my step-sister or brothers, if I was a suitable match) a kidney or marrow.
“A report by the National Institutes of Health notes “life-threatening complications for all marrow donors have been rare; there were 13 reported in 4,800 [0.27%, or one in 370] analyzed marrow donations.””
So the ‘theres no risk involved’ claim simply isnt true on the face of it - its not exactly Russian roulette either of course, but definitely not zero. Not to mention we dont know what the odds for success are either, its one thing to risk your life to definitely save someone and quite another to do it for just another year of life for instance.
We have no idea what the real story is here. A search of the various articles makes it pretty clear that the two were ‘never close’ which can mean so many things its not funny.
From a practical perspective I think this kind of thing will probably only discourage people to get tested in the first place, as the comment at the end of the article said. I just hope all the people who are saying how terrible she is are putting their money where their mouth is and getting on the registry themselves.