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Six Months Old, Eight New Organs
AEton writes "According to the BBC, Dr. Andreas Tzakis has just successfully replaced six-month-old Alessia Di Matteo's liver, stomach, pancreas, small and large intestine, spleen, left kidney, and right kidney in a record-setting operation. The child is so far doing fine with a one-year-old baby's organs. Tzakis is no stranger to multiple-organ transplants; in 1997 he set the previous record of seven organs by replacing seven of a two-and-a-half-year-old's organs. It must be a little odd to know that a growing plurality of your tissue used to be someone else's."
This is going to be really wierd/difficult when she grows up telling her that half of her organs come from someone else, a dead somone else. I wouldn't know how I'd react to hearing somthing like that. Wow
Well, depends if all the parts were replaced at the same time! But I suppose it is a lot different when thinking of people. Obviously they are the same people no matter what organs are replaced, except, I suppose, for the brain. We are our brains.
Seems kinda like replacing parts on cars. It dosen't matter what you replace the car will always have its mileage, until of course you change the engine.
Our brains are our engines. Damn, now I sound like a gear-head.
-- johntracy.com, because everybody else is wrong.
I know this will sound harsh, but if your child is born with so many problems that they would die without eight organ replacements, one has to wonder what their long-term chances of survival realistically are.
I know we can work wonders with organ transplants these days, but how much is too much? What are this child's chances of having a reasonable quality of life after being born with so many potentially fatal problems?
It's sad to see your loved ones die, but I can't help wondering if the parents did the right thing under these circumstances.
No doubt my feelings on this would be much stronger if it was my own child in question, but it would seem we as a species very often let our emotions get in the way of rational thought, and I'm just not sure these parents made the right decision for their child.
This is most definitely a difficult issue - I could well be wrong, but I'm throwing my initial thoughts into the pot to see what others think.
Organic free-range music... yum!
When every component of the [baby] has been replaced at least once, is it still the same [baby]?
Yes. The law says that it is the same ship (err, baby); laws are a codification of social norms; and identity is nothing other than a social norm.
This becomes even more obvious when you consider that replacing elementary particles is a no-op.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
I'd be pretty pissed if she died after 10 years. Think of how amazingly expensive this procedure probably was for their insurance company! That's money that you and I have to foot the bill for. At 6 months old, wouldn't it make a hell of a lot more sense to let her die and start over? If your computer is SO fucked up that you need a new motherboard, CPU, memory, hard drive, DVD-ROM, floppy drive, and there's a huge ass dent and scratch in your case and the plastic front is all cracked, wouldn't you just say fuck it and start from scratch? It may sound cruel and heartless, but this kind of surgery is just ludicrous for a baby. She's going to be fucked up for the rest of her life now whereas if they would've just let her die peacefully they could've started fresh.
However, the cost of doing things like this is astonishing, even in countries outside the US where medical treatment is priced more sanely. How many infants and other folks people could be saved by spending this money elsewhere? For example, from today's NY Times:
Terror of Childbirth
however as much as I wish to see this girl survive and live a healthy, happy life you have to wonder if those organs might have been better used saving multiple children with one major organ failing instead of someone who seems to have a body that seems to be almost completely non-functional. Think about what this girl's long term prospects are - considering her body's frail state. Hardly anything inside of her works. Will she live a year and die, taking the truckload of transplanted organs with her, while others with one or two problematic organs and much better chances to survive long-term post-transplant are forced to wait and quite possibly die?
Not neccesarily... My old Land Rover has a new engine, but still has the mileage (and it's clearly evident).
:-)
The gearbox is still the original, along with most of the drivetrain. But the wheels, engine and odometer have all been replaced. It's still the same Land Rover though, in terms of its registration number and VIN plates.
I don't think you can clearly draw the line in this kind of situation. Various authorities have guidelines to follow when trying to determine if something has changed significantly, but if it looks and behaves the same, and has the same identification marks then it's generally considered to be 'the same'. This doesn't account for originality of all the parts though, which I guess is the real question here. I guess we should just be happy that our cars still work, and that the kid is alive
A significant proportion (I've heard estimates of 98%) of the matter that you consist of right now wasn't part of you this time last year.
Decode these
I know a guy who started the whole "lets use computers to map the human geome" thing. I know about 20 bio people that have the brains to do good real science.
Not one of them are in the field anymore. it turns out that real science doesn't pay. We could pull of great things but we keep running off the people who can help. How many great biochemsists are working filling perscriptions at the local drug store? Too many and we will all pay at some point.
I might not have saved that child. It's clear she has very low chance of having a normal or happy life, much less a productive one. Some cultures don't even give a child a name unless she/he can survive for some time. Or, that's just what I've heard. Anyway, if this was done on public money, it's a waste of it. How many people could be saved with that money? If the operation and subsequent care is privately funded, then I have no problem with it, though I feel pity for the little one.
Seriously ethically challenged: With no real prospect for long term survival, this little girl sounds like some ego driven maniac's insurance fueled biology experiment drawing scarce medical resources from the system. Kinder and better for everyone but the doctors to let this one go... Biologically a dead end, if the mother is still able she would be better off trying again. Societies that can't accept hard facts and choices, whither.
consider this: what fraction of the molecular content within you (including your brain) will be there within a year? Replacing one liver, one cell, or one amino acid at a time...philosophically no different, although biologically very different. A proton is a proton, provided it gets put back in the right place. :)
or incilin or any human advancements that have allowed people to live who would have otherwise died.
.
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Everyone who draws the line of what is too far, like you just did, conveniently places that line to exclude any kind of technological help their survival has depended on.
There are plenty of people living in dirt, eating trash to survive for what will probably be a pretty short life. Maybe until such people decide that THEIR quality of life is so low that they start drowning themselves and their children in muddy puddles, we can implement a "quality of life" policy and put those poor souls out of their misery if they fall below the definition of "liveable". Until then . . . I say you are playing God with out any of the usual minimal requisites to play the part.
If you are going to argue against this, please, oh please, say that the same money could have been better spent to save many more lives in some developing country.
But making judgement on someone's quality of life is all fun and games until someone looks at YOUR marginal existence and says, "man, we should really put YOU out of your misery."
Is this why the U.S. can bomb people and say it is saving those same people at the same time? Under a dictatorship their quality of life is so low that it is well worth risking their death in an attempt to raise their quality of life to a level worth living? How noble . .
I sympathize that you were merely trying to discuss the issue, but your assumptions reveal a value that has been the root of all types of exploitations of other people. The quality of life argument has been used to inslave, to kill, and to exterminate entire civilizations. And now, I fear it has been used to turn the U.S. into a tool to allows poorly educated politicians play God.
I fear God's retribution for such blasphemy . .
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
If a baby who is 6 months old needs 8 simulatneous organ transplants, then shouldn't the baby just be allowed to die naturally? I consider a single transplant or a tweak of an organ to justifiable, but isn't transplanting 8 organs in a 6 month old baby breaking some type of natural law?
I know it would be difficult for the parents to bear the sadness of watching their child die, but what if the organs are rejected in the future and they have to watch their child slowly wither away, while be connected to all sorts of tubes and wires? Could those 8 organs have been used to save 8 babies or young children? Could the money that was used to pay for this multiple transplant be used to save others' lives?
My wife is 8 month pregnant and I hope we never are in a situation similar to this. It would be difficult, but being faced with 8 organ transplants, I would think that some higher power might be telling me something about this baby.
Why did I lurk so long before registering for a Slashdot account? I could have had a Slashdot ID of less than 100000.
You raise some good points. However, the same arguments could have been made years ago about any transplants, or severe burn victims, or any of a number of problems that were once considered incurable or prohibitively expensive and time-consuming to treat. It is primarily through such pioneering work that that advances can be made routine, safe, and affordable.
It's been said that the cure for hemophilia is to let the bleeders die before they breed more bleeders.
Probably uttered by someone who is completely ignorant of genetics. Since hemophilia is caused by a recessive gene, just "letting the bleeders die" isn't going to do much. Just because someone has some bad genes, doesn't mean they don't have any good ones. My grandfather has usher's syndrome (which means I'm probably a carrier). He's also a genius (literally). Since genetics allows for the possibility that good genes will be passed on, while bad ones won't (at least in a portion of the offpsring) I don't see any reason to "selectively breed" people.
You assume there are multiple children, all of a compatible tissue type, each waiting for one of each organ, that didn't get an organ. This is unlikely.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Indeed, not everyone that donates is paid. Here in Canada I donate blood every two and a bit months. All I get out of it is some free Coke and a stored karma feeling (some day I'll be able to go on a homocidal killing spree and still be a good person for the lives I've helped).
I've been giving blood ever since legally allowed. A+ blood isn't the most in demand, but because I feel there are people that may need it at any given time and I like to think it's not a matter of being paid for most people elsewhere and that people are just decent folk.
Though I really hate the way commecials try to guilt-trip people into giving blood, it's not something that anyone should feel obligated to do. "It's in you to give" almost makes me want to stop giving blood in protest of them being asses about a kindness people do.
I'm sick of following my dreams - I'm just going to ask them where they're going and hook up with them later.
What always annoys me in such articles is that the journalists concentrate on the kid and ignore the medical science. Come on, who cares about Alissia? She is only 6 months old - a less than complete human being, and a defective one at that. Why isn't the public told about what medical achievements made it possible, what infrastructure was created in the hospitals in the past decade to make this possible, about the doctors, nurses, their training, education, about computers, about tools, etc., etc.? Why? Certainly all that is much more important than whether yet another human baby will live or die...
Call me heartless, but crap like that BBC article breeds stupidity among general public and teaches them it's ok to ignore how things happen in our world. And hence some of the readers will say the obligatory "wow" (if at all) and go back to opposing stem-cell research, genetics, budget extension for medical schools, and after that will send their kid to some quack or a faith-healing program after consulting with a professionally made horoscope, of course...
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
I don't see how you can make that joke, and how people can think its funny. Someone obviously lost their child, which is a horrible thing to have happen. Just hope that you never lose anything with significant meaning, because only then will you even begin to comprehend the cruelty of your statement.
I had similar thoughts when I saw this report on TV. I have to admit, if the baby were my child I probably would do all I could do to keep my child alive.
But are we just talking about the cost, or is there another issue that we have to consider. Technology is getting to the point where just about everyone lives to breeding age. This means that the defective genes these children have are passed on. Are we de-evolving as a species because we improve the chances of living to breeding age?
The only way that I can think to balance this technological conundrum is via genetics. If we could identify and correct such issues in an embryo, or go to the level of the movie Gattaca and pre-select those embryos with the best genes, that would decrease the possiblity of such extreme surgeries. Of course, that then brings up a tremendous number of ethics issues, but none that cannot be worked through, or that some small country won't become a haven for.
Or, in a more cruel line, if you can't afford it, you can't have it. Is it really societies responsibility to make sure that every child has an equal chance at attaining adulthood? Or is it their parents.
The United States has been taking more and more of the responsibility of parenting away from the parent and to the state. Our children are currently taught moral values by state-run schools, sex ed for example. There are numerous examples of parents being brought up on charges for spanking(I'm not talking about beating, I'm talking about a swat on the rump that every American over the age of 40 has had at least two or three times in their lives) or denying health care due to personal or religeous beliefs. Where will it stop?
I don't have the answers, I don't think anyone does. I am of the opinion that if you can't afford it, all you get is basic health care to treat colds, broken bones, etc., and the more expensive health care that is needed for 6 organ transplants are not guarantees. If a family can raise the money or a hospital wants to waive fees so they can try new procedures, those options should always be available.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
I'm seeing some people here saying that this baby should have merely been allowed to die, and the parents encouraged to just "have another one". Obviously I can't say for sure, but I'd hazard a guess that most of these people aren't parents. If they were, they'd realize that most parents become deeply emotionally attached to their children very quickly, usually at an early stage in pregnancy, in fact, so it's not as though a six-month-old girl can simply be scrapped and replaced as though she were a defective car.
Here's a more pertinent point: once you start saying that some people are too "physically defective" to live, where would you draw the line? I, for example, am among the most physically health people around -- my mother always said I was "disgustingly healthy". Even so, had I lived in Nazi Germany, I would have been exterminated due to my "physical imperfections" (and no, I'm not Jewish).
Then, on a more personal level, there's my wonderful girlfriend, who's beautiful, incredibly intelligent (IQ in the mid 170s), who graduated from Berkeley with honors, and who spends her time rescuing homeless cats and advocating for social services for autistics (not to mention the ways she's brought joy into my life, in more ways than I can count). She was also born with severe birth defects that required eight or nine major operations over a number of years at a total cost of several million dollars. Was it worth it? I don't even have to wonder about that.
The simple fact of the matter is, you can't tell which human lives are going to be valuable and which ones aren't when the baby is so young. As to the argument of "quantity" -- that you could have saved more babies with those eight organs -- well, let's use your own calculus. Why is it so important to save the maximum number of lives possible, especially considering, as you point out, that making babies isn't exactly a huge challenge? It's not as though human beings are in short supply these days -- far from it. And it's also not as though most people even want babies, considering (for example) that one-third of all pregnancies in the United States end in abortion.
I realize this post is a bit meandering, but you'll have to excuse my lack of coherence. There are people responding to this article who are essentially saying that my girlfriend (a slashdotter whom I love with all my heart and plan to marry someday) should be dead because she's "too defective" and repairing those defects wasn't worth the cost or effort. It's hard to write clearly when your emotional response to such comments is interfering so much.
You think we should let her die ? Are you a parent ? How much would your childs life be worth ? To give her 10 more years of life ? This is why we have insurance, to pay for these things. How about surgery on co-joined twins ? Should we stop that because they might die ? Who should decide ? You ? Some HMO ? It's a little easy here to compare a child to your computer. I would like to see you so casual when it is your child who is going to die
Save a Life. Donate Blood. Please.
Altering natural selection is why healthcare is skyrocketing.
In short, your post is an extremely good argument for America's system of private health care. When we start deciding how our public health dollars are spent, it doesn't take long for the healthy to realize that they outnumber the sick. When people realize, for instance, the very large portion of medical expenditures targeted at the elderly--well, hey. They're not productive members any more. And let's not forget about the special ed kids in school: some kid drooling in a wheel chair is never going to hold down a job or pay taxes either. If we just stopped giving them medical services, they'd die--and stop costing us money. Right?
Years ago I attended an economics lecture given by Milton Friedman, the Nobel prize-winning economist. He described a situation much like this, and went on at great length about the "tyranny of democracy." What happens, he asked, when 51% of Congress votes to shoot the other 49? In much the same way, the tyranny of democracy is expressed when the young, the healthy, the tax-paying, the well-educated discover that they could pay a lot less in taxes if they just killed off the lame, the halt, and the feeble.
This isn't an abstract argument: a population phenomenon in the United States called the Baby Boom means that an abnormally large population of people was born between 1948 and 1960. The oldest Boomers are nearing retirement age--and when 2025 rolls around (when the youngest Boomers turn 65) a disproportionately large portion of U.S. citizens will be expecting retirement benefits. As we get closer and closer to that point, I fully expect to hear more people claiming to be "courageous" and "willing to take a stand" by demanding that we kill old people.
For now at least, we (collectively) have no say in whether or not an Italian baby can have a lot of organs transplanted. And I think that's a good thing.