Child removed from transplant list because of disability
The Miami Herald is reporting that a 15 year old Gainesville boy has been removed from a list of people needing a liver because he is disabled. Shands Hospital removed him from the list because the shaky state foster care program cannot guarantee that he will be placed with parents after his operation. They feel that he may not heal properly while under the care of the state and removed him from the wait list. State officials have been in talks with both the hospital and the doctors that made this decision. Even after the state said that it would do everything in its power to give the boy a good environment to heal, the doctors disagreed. Even though the law states that everyone that needs a transplant has an even chance of getting it, doctors can change who has access. There is no law that requires children to be in certain environments for transplants but the doctors have appeared to have invented one. Without a medical team willing to do the operation, the boy is sentenced to death. Even if a positive match came in for a liver, without the medical team to perform the operation he has no one to turn to.
It is disgusting that these doctors are exercising who gets to live and die based on whether someone has a disability or not. One would have thought that this type of eugenics was abandoned after the Nazis were vanquished after World War II. Evidently not. Without the operation this boy will die, and there is no reason to think he will not have a full life if he does get the liver. It is sad that this boy is looking at the end of his life before he gets a chance to go to college or even his first real job. The ADA is supposed to protect us from disgusting people like these doctors, but they get to make the rules.
We reported earlier this year about a paper that was sent to hospitals that worked out who should get medication during a national emergency. In a situation like a terrorist attack using a nuclear or biological attack there probably would not be enough beds, doctors, or medicine to go around.The plan recommended that people with disabilities, the elderly, and those with medical conditions not be given medical help. These people were described as not being able to survive the attack or the upheaval afterward, so it was better to only help the young and able bodied. This program was to be instituted to protect most of the population from attack so the infrastructure of the country would not be damaged.
We as a country need to decide if human life is important. It is against the law to murder someone so there must be some kind of thought put into life and it’s importance. Doctors are supposed to take the Hippocratic Oath to do no harm – yet these doctors are more then willing to march this boy down to his death bed. Something is messed up here morally for these doctors to even think this is a good idea. Lets hope that lawyers come to the aid of this young boy before his time runs out.
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