[pepsionice]

There are two curious pieces to this story, which you don’t really get much information on.

First, if you took the lung or kidney out of an adult, and transferred it into a nine or ten or twelve year-old kid...is the success rate any less? If it is shown to be less, then we are simply wasting a valuable resource and doing this merely for PR purposes. I’m still waiting for a real medical explanation how we started this rule in the first place.

Second, the health secretary...has not been given any great magical legal powers. This is very obvious now, and I doubt that the President or the Senate desire to give such powers. So what do we have left? Judges? A judge will determine your health situation and what the medical community does or doesn’t do for you? Most of us would question that logic. But we don’t want some health secretary sitting in DC to be the ultimate choice giver either.

[Doogle]

First, if you took the lung or kidney out of an adult, and transferred it into a nine or ten or twelve year-old kid

..it used to be....NOW doctors can use an adult organ in the procedure

[bert]

The logical extreme and Americans love extreme everything, is the health court. As soon as the bureaucrats deny, the claim is put to the court.

The court decides between life and money

[Coldwater Creek]

Lung transplant are a very different breed than say a liver or a kidney. For starters the lungs are way more difficult to harvest. They bruise easily. The lung also continues to be subject to damage after tx because of all the stuff that we breathe in the course of life. The cost is close to a million dollars, and even if successful, begins to deteriorate rapidly after the first year, and is given only a 5 year survival rate. Yes, the shaved lung might by her some time, but in few years without doubt she will need another tx.