steve jobs liver transplant. the power of money.

[Free Thinker]

Steve Jobs, Apple Inc.’s chief executive officer, got a liver transplant quickly because of a U.S. system that favors patients with the means to rush to geographic areas where there is less competition for organs.

Memphis, where Jobs got the transplant, is one of several U.S. meccas for liver patients who can afford to travel, doctors said. Flight records show Jobs’s personal jet flew at least six times this year from California, with one of the longest transplant lists in the U.S., to Memphis, where the wait is shorter.Jobs, 54, got his transplant in part because regions can keep donated organs on a local list -- even when there may be sicker patients not far away. His experience spotlights organ allocation practices that have been under fire for decades and will be discussed at a national public meeting the United Network for Organ Sharing in Richmond, Virginia, plans for later this year, doctors said.

“You could call it gaming the system, that may be true,” John Fung, chairman of transplant surgery at the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, said in a telephone interview. “But until we tackle the problem of what makes the system unfair, we can’t criticize people who are trying to help themselves.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=au6imqRi7UHE

 

[Daal]

Organs should be a allowed to be sold and bought. Those who argue otherwise are economics noobs who are harming society and hide behind a distorted view of whats moral to back their positon

 

[scriabinop23]

Quote from Daal:

Organs should be a allowed to be sold and bought. Those who argue otherwise are economics noobs who are harming society and hide behind a distorted view of whats moral to back their positon

??? Free markets only deal with efficiency, not fairness. If you define efficiency as implicitly fair, then I guess you make sense. Otherwise as an example, why should a trust fund alcoholic be more entitled to an organ transplant than an honest hardworking person who contracted some sort of disease by accident ?

Furthermore, you add a general risk of insecurity to society from organ hijacking crime if you open up a free market. (OTOH, I imagine many more people would donate organs if they knew their family would receive money upon their death. A free life insurance policy of sorts)

 

[hoodooman]

Your last comment sounds like a very good idea.

 

[Nexen]

You mean to tell me this visionary figure worked all his life for nothing ?

Let him use his wealth in peace and don't be so envious.

 

[hoodooman]

Here is the real shit bird.

Bogle received a heart transplant at 74.

http://www.vanguard.com/bogle_site/sp20031215bs.html

 

[ipatent]

http://www.africaresource.com/rasta...ity-agencies-the-zoes-ark-project-by-ogu-eji/

 

[eagle]

World of Competitiveness! Everything is becoming a commodity. Gradually, human organs and even relationship (maybe) are becoming a commodity...

Quote from Daal:

Organs should be a allowed to be sold and bought. Those who argue otherwise are economics noobs who are harming society and hide behind a distorted view of whats moral to back their positon

 

[Thermactor]

Quote from ipatent:

http://www.africaresource.com/rasta...ity-agencies-the-zoes-ark-project-by-ogu-eji/

Thanks for the laugh.

 

[Cutten]

Quote from scriabinop23:

??? Free markets only deal with efficiency, not fairness. If you define efficiency as implicitly fair, then I guess you make sense. Otherwise as an example, why should a trust fund alcoholic be more entitled to an organ transplant than an honest hardworking person who contracted some sort of disease by accident ?

How is it fair to prevent me from selling my own body parts to the person of my choice, if I want to?

Why should a trust fund alcoholic be entitled to $1 billion dollars due to lucky sperm/inheritance when an honest hardworking person lives in poverty because they were born in N Korea? If you cry "fairness" then you have to mutilate attractive people to make them average looking, handicap great athletes, give geniuses lobotomies to bring their IQs down to average etc. All those disparities are just as big if not bigger then the ability to buy organs. At least most people with money have worked for it, whereas looks, brains, and place of birth have *nothing* to do with effort.