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Alberta woman dies after being denied transplant for refusing to get COVID vaccine
(nationalpost.com)
this post was submitted on 25 Aug 2023
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Ugh. $125k to get an organ transplant in the US without the vaccine. Also, the stupid tweet speculating that vaccines aren't required to donate organs. Nope, they absolutely aren't. Idiots. Imbeciles. Morons. It's absolutely infuriating that people can be so willingly ignorant.
Sure, hospitals willing and able to do organ transplants are rare, but that's because organs to transplant are exceptionally rare. Other than kidney donations, and I think liver (IIRC), all organ transplants require someone to die, and to die under pretty controlled conditions so that their organs are still in a usable condition. For every organ transplant that occurs, there are a dozen others that die waiting.
To give this woman an organ transplant is to deny someone else an organ transplant. The question is not whether she should get an organ transplant despite not taking every reasonable measure to increase the odds of that organ contributing to a longer and healthier life; but rather who else dies if she doesn't want to take every reasonable measure.
The fundamental calculus of organ donation is not everyone who needs one will get one. Who will benefit the most? This is absolutely the practical application of those philosophical paradoxes where you are asked to pick which life to save under various circumstances.
Her whole case reeks of the entitlement that oozes from the Convoy protesters. I shouldn't be inconvenienced, I shouldn't have to compromise to help others. I should get to live, screw everyone else.
I have a friend who got a lung transplant around 10 years ago. It's a little unnerving how bloodthirsty I got whenever I saw an aggressive motorcycle driver. "I hope they are an organ donor" became my new curse. I wasn't exactly wishing death upon people, but it was sobering to feel how mixed my feelings became knowing a friend was waiting for an organ donation.
The inverse of this story of this woman dying is the story of everyone who skipped past her in line. One of those organs could have been hers. I'd like to hear stories about people whose lives were saved.
Overall I agree. While every death is a tragedy, the reality is that if someone is denied a compatible organ, it means that there was someone who received it and was willing to go through more effort to ensure that they would survive the operation long term.
COVID still exists, and it is still running rampant through the world, and it is still a legitimate threat to those with weakened immune systems, something that all organ recipients are.
This is virtually the same as someone being denied a lung transplant because the refused to quit smoking. Someone died to give you that lung, and so if you're not going to treat it with respect, you don't deserve it as much as someone who will.
That said, the numbers for transplants I've found are a lot more positive than I had expected: Organ transplants in Canada, 2021: Donations and need. That said, most organ transplants are from the deceased, and of those, a significant percentage were from Ontario and BC (adjusted for population) interestingly enough.
Though with that said as well, in 2022 80% of donations were from the deceased, 52% were from family members, and compared to 2936 transplants, there were an additional 3777 people on the wait list. 701 Canadians were removed from the wait list that same year, 39% of whom had died while waiting. (https://www.cihi.ca/en/summary-statistics-on-organ-transplants-wait-lists-and-donors)
The numbers are pretty uplifting overall, but until we can commercially grow organs (either in a vat or a donor pig) we need to take care of donated organs and maximize their value by preferentially giving them to those who are most likely to survive receiving them in the long term.
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