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Todd Need[ed] a Liver
Mr. Christmas Lights writes "According to this CNN article, Todd Krampitz's liver transplant operation was a success. What is significant about this is how he used a multi-media campaign to get a donor - this included billboards stating 'I need a Liver. Please help Save my Life' that all pointed to his web site at ToddNeedsALiver.com where you can read more. Certainly a novel use of the World Wide Web."
I don't understand. I thought organ transplants could not be done privately and could only be done through organ transplant lists where you were ranked on necessity and the immediate terminality of your situation?
So, how exactly would a media campaign expedite such a transplant?! It's not like he could pay someone for it and I'm pretty sure they require anonymity. As happened in this case, I don't believe they allow a specific person to donate a specific organ to a specific recipient without going through the hospital process as there might be someone else chosen as more needy or more urgent.
And at any rate, this just further shows the disparity between those who have money and those who do not. Those who have it can do a media blitz to get a liber or find their abducted child and so on while those without it are fucked.
By the way - his girlfriend is hot. Too bad they seem like a couple of religious nuts.
The real question to ask here is whether or not such ad campaigns equate to 'buying' a liver through spending money on the advertisements? Could this be the next boon to advertisers?
Things like this help to defeat the image of the web as the online wild west which makes it harder to lobby for fundamental changes to be forced on the architecture. Kinda hard to paint it as a force for "darkening our childrens' hearts" as Bush insinuated it often was in the 2000 election when it is being used effectively to save lives.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
Capitalism at its finest, or semi-evil abuse of having money?
This seems to shout that those who are able to afford it, or able to come up with the best resources first, get the goods (a liver, in this case). So life and death quickly become a matter of being the cleverest.
On that note, though, isn't that what natural selection, survivial of the fittest, is about? Those who are able to best take advantage of the situation to make out the best in the end.
Still not sure I agree with it, however...
First, I'm glad that his life now has a higher probability of being saved. No transplant operation is a guarenteed success. He has a family who cares, he's young, and he deserves a chance.
However, there is a great shortage of organ donors - many of whom are people who do not have access to the financial resources necessary to conduct such an impressive media campaign. Do these people have less of a right to survive? Unfortunately, the success of Todd's campaign will likely encourage future copycat media blitz's.
Are we going to allow wealth to decide who live's or dies? Simple charisma, money, and good looks seem to be the factor which saved (hopefully) this fellows life. What do you say to the single teacher who needs a transplant? Sorry, you just have to wait your chance?
If you want to make a difference for many people, sign your organ donor card, donate to the red cross, encourage stem cell research. And please, try to think of a better way to allocate organs than giving an organ to those who have the most money. I'm sorry that I'm harsh with this, but now someone else has been pushed farther down the line in the transplant list, and that person may not survive.
/* Dang, I can't type that well. */
We have this weird superstition that there is something wrong with this. I'm sure that in a few decades people will wonder what we could have been thinking, just as we look back on those times, a couple of hundred years ago, when autopsies were illegal and medical students and researchers had to skulk around illegally buying corpses.
But what if people do not agree with the way this list is handled? There can be very valid reasons, to disagree. Think about priorities. Everything else equal...
Organ donations are a complex matter. Whatever the details, I believe that every patient has the right to come up with creative ideas to fight for his/her survival, and also that each donor has the right to decide what should be done with his/her organs; who else could have a higher right?
Remember this guy?
I have the feeling he's still quite single.
Then there was "I bought too many shoes, give me $20,000" girl.. Karyn?
It is cutting edge, but it is possible to do living unrelated liver transplants. The transplant clinic here in Richmond, Virginia ( Hume Lee Transplant Center ) has done about 60 in the past three years according to their web site. Several have been published in the local paper.
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In general, transplants from living volunteers have better results because the organ is away from a real blood supply for the shortest amount of time.
I'm sure the transplant center Todd delt with had a medical reason to do what they did ( or possibly that is the only transplant his insurance would cover )
7 years ago I received a kidney from my mom so I could live. Three months later my brother died suddenly and his tissued were used in transplants to others, so I am in a unique position to see both sides.
I think that those who have complained that Todd "jumping the list" fail to see the point: There needs to be more organs available for transplant, better preventative health care to reduce the chance diseases don't destoy one's organs, and more research towards ways of improving transplantation, and alternatives to transplant ( for example: artificial hearts )
Some places already have organ exchanges set up for kidney transplants so that if you have a member of the family that needs a kidney, and yours won't work, you can arrange to give yours to someone else and your relative gets bumped up the list. For example see
There is also Living Donors Online which seeks to coordinate living donors for kidneys, livers and bone marrow. There are many cases of people who donate even if they don't know someone who needs an organ, because they feel it's the right thing to do.
Hmm... but then if the value of organs goes up too high, you run the risk of an organ "black market", where one gets knocked on the head, gets their kidneys (if one is good, two would be better!) ripped out, the kidneys are sold, the money collected, and the "donor" left to their own means.
It could make for a good movie plot, though. Multi-billionaire has failing organs. Maybe he's lived a conservative billionaire's life, maybe he's lived like it's 1999. (there's an ethical/moral tarball there, also). Or maybe it's his kid that has CF or any other more grievous genetically inherited diseases that could be treated by new organs.
So, let's say hospitals start surreptitiously keeping track of DNA from babies being born, people coming in for blood work, etc., and providing likely organ matching information on the side.
Multi-billionaire gets some information about one or two people who might be likely candidates, hires PIs to investigate people, determines that they really are suitable, (healthy lifestyles, etc).
First, the offers are subtle. They're refused. Then they start getting a little bolder. Maybe appeals to public opinion to pressure the now not-so-anonymous donors. blah blah blah.
Ultimately, the billionaire, who is very used to getting his way, gets his way. Hopefully this happens early in the movie, and the rest of the movie explores the outcomes of the actions, i.e., the billionaire has a very good legal team, and the contract has a variety of terms to make it easy for the billionaire to default on whatever payments or other considerations to be made. Maybe the billionaire works the system to actually get the State to compel the organ donation, whether through quick legislative action mandating implied consent (that, oddly enough, isn't revokable), blah blah blah.
Or, maybe in an odd twist, someone in the other family needs and organ donation, and the multi-billionaire is a target donor match, but the billionaire does not want to donate back.
Obviously, their religion was just a PR trick. Had they been true believing Christians, they could have saved themselves a lot of work and money: as Jesus said so eloquently in Mt 21:22 "And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive."