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Transplant Surgeon Called Dibs On Steve Jobs' Home
theodp writes "The Commercial Appeal reports that Dr. James Eason, the surgeon who performed Steve Jobs' liver transplant, found himself grilled at length Monday by Shelby County Commission members. The Univ. of Tennessee-Methodist Transplant Institute, which Eason heads, is in a bitter dispute over the distribution of human organs. Pressed for details by Commissioners West Bunker and Terry Roland about the 2009 liver transplant that Eason performed on the late Steve Jobs, Eason acknowledged that he's now living in the Memphis home that Jobs used during his convalescence. Bunker asked, "Was that a deal cut to get him a transplant here locally?" Eason: "I understand. It's a fair question. Absolutely not." Eason said a company lined up the housing for Jobs. "I took care of him and visited him in that home. And when I learned that it was going to be going on the market, I asked him, I asked the administrator of the LLC, if I could purchase it." So, is it time for Apple to shed some light on The Mystery of Steve Jobs' Memphis Mansion? It was reported that Apple lawyer George Riley, reportedly a friend of Eason's, helped Jobs with the arrangements for the Memphis mansion, which was acquired at a bargain price of $850,000 from the State of Tennessee by the mysterious LCHG, LLC on 3/26/2009. LCHG was formed on 3/17/2009, apparently just days before Jobs received his liver (on 3/21/2010, Jobs noted he was coming up on the 1-year anniversary of his transplant). Records show that title to the mansion was transferred to Eason in May, 2011, about three months after the National Enquirer painted a grim picture of Jobs' health. LCHG, LLC was dissolved in February 2012."
Badly written article. I have no idea what it means.
work in progress
Let's just say Dr. James Eason was moved by Steve Jobs.... TO A BIGGER HOUSE!
Clearly LCHG means "Livers Can't Hinder Greatness" - he wanted limited liability for his failing organ.
...so naturally we have to assume there was a conspiracy to kill him.
Conversely, for people who believe Steve was a really nice guy... we can also discuss the conspiracy to save him from the conspiracy to kill him.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Someone else take his ex girlfriend. Do not want.
Ok, so. It's a gossip piece, but it belongs on Slashdot's homepage because it involves Steve Jobs in a semi-tangential sort of way? Right, OK.
It is extremely common for people who happen to know another person to be cut a nice deal when selling property. In fact, I might even say that is normal. Jobs knew a guy, guy wanted to buy his house, Jobs sold it to him, end of story NO ONE GIVES A SHIT.
I'm not even sure what the summary is implying, and I really don't feel it is worth taking the time to find out. This isn't even "news", it's just sensationalistic crap (I'm assuming, I only skimmed the summary).
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Let the litany of Jobs worshippers now feast upon all my +1 funnies with -1 overrateds. I suppose had I made a joke about how Apple's iDied product isn't selling so well, or another iSomething joke, it'd be -1000 flamebait and they'd have to call Malda out of retirement to help rewrite the code so it'd be more resistant to having everyone on the internet simultaniously facepalm, lol, and then -1 a single comment. *maniacal laugh* Soon my pretties...
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
This is the type of stuff that always happens when there is a prohibition on something. It makes the gatekeepers so powerful that people will use whatever means necessary to influence them.
Acknowledging that people own their bodies would allow them to sell parts of their bodies. Those that can be harvested while they are alive like bone marrow, kidneys, parts of the liver, would be pretty straight forward. Those that are harvested after death might involve getting a deal on life insurance if you transfer ownership of your organs to the insurance company after death, or you could will them to a family member.
This would make organs so readily available that no black market would exist.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
The issue would be if, for example, Steve jobs secret LLC bought the house for 1.3 million and then re-sold it to the doctor who performed his surgery for 850k and that was significantly different from market rates.
From the looks of it they bought and sold for 850k on a property appraised before the 2008 crash at 1.3-1.4 mill.
That's pretty much how the world works.
And that is the way the world should work. People should be able to use money to buy things they want, encouraging more people to supply them. The problem here is that we have decided this shouldn't apply to organs, so the supply is severely restricted. If organs were treated like a normal commodity they would be far more plentiful because way more people would be donors. I have the donor dot on my drivers license, and was paid exactly $0 to volunteer.
Another problem is motorcycle helmet laws. By preventing lethal head injuries on otherwise young healthy individuals, we are removing a great source of organs. Maybe anyone who has volunteered to be a donor should be allowed to ride without a helmet.
Isn't it interesting that Jobs, a California resident, was able to get a transplant in Tennessee? Bypassing all those sick little children and other in that state who were on the list before him, btw.
The whole thing disgusted me almost as much as the fact that David Crosby was bumped up the list for his liver transplant to just go back to his ways again.
And in the meantime, there these poor kids who just got dealt a bad deal going without because they're not rich and shameless.
fat lot of good it did him.
You begin to understand the problem, you just need to look a little bit further.
The system prioritizes those who could most benefit medically. That is, if you are likely to die even with the transplant, then you should be behind the person who might have a 80% chance of 20 or 30 more years of life with that same organ. If Jobs "greased the skids" to get himself to the head of the list even though he was likely to die with the transplant, then there are some serious questions to be answered.
Clearly the commissioners believe there is enough suspicion to investigate this more closely. It has the appearance of corruption on the part of the doctor and of Jobs.
It is of course fairly obvious the home was only purchased to game the transplant waiting list system in place in the U.S. That he was placed ahead on the list in that state by the doctor in question is pure conjecture, though.
Not everyone can receive every organ that comes up for being transplanted. AFAIK, you need a fairly complex match of genetic compatibility for an organ to be actually useable for a given patient - and even in case of a "match", you need to keep taking fairly heavy immunosupressants during the rest of your life to keep your body from rejecting it. And since I would assume that there is a separate list for each (for lack of a better word - IANAMD) genetic category that donor organs come in: maybe SJ was indeed the front of the waiting list for the liver he ended up with? Without access to the relevant medical records that question is absolutely impossible to answer.
What does surprise me is that he got a transplant at all in the first place. In Europe, advanced stage cancer patients usually are not eligible to receive any transplants whatsoever, due to the general scarcity of donor organs, and the low expected benefits of transplantation in such a patient. This seems to be different in the U.S., though, otherwise someone else would already have commented on that?
While on the outside the situation has the appearance that there could have been impropriety, the appropriate thing of course is to look at the hard evidence.
Giving a sweet deal on real estate to a friend and doctor for excellent medical care is not illegal. (While I haven't received a house, I get homemade baked goods all the time.) Giving a sweet deal on real estate to a friend as a kickback for being pushed up the transplant list is highly unethical. But there's an easy way to find out: have the state medical review board take a peek at the transplant waiting list records over the time period. If Steve Jobs mysteriously moves up the list for no good medical reason, or is listed in front of other patients with more pressing need or waiting time, then you have your smoking gun. Otherwise, if everything is appropriate with the transplant waiting list, then it sounds like the system worked as designed.
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
There's a much bigger loophole that he exploited to get his transplant that's not even being discussed. Why are we even discussing Tennessee? Jobs lived in California. He was only on the list in Tennessee because he could afford to establish a residence in every state with a list that he wanted his name on and because he had access to a private jet to get him anywhere in the country on a moment's notice. The rest of us would be stuck waiting for a local organ to become available. If we want to ferret out corruption, why are we focusing on one doctor? Why not focus on the systematic flaws that allow the wealthy to get preferential treatment. A fairly simple law that would only allow someone to put their name on the list in only one state would make things more fair for everyone.
OK.
girlintraining (1395911), you're a wambulance!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Why would you conclude that? He doesn't have to own a residence in the area to be on their list. He could have just as easily stayed at a rental property, or anywhere else that would allow him to reside there temporarily - heck, if he had a friend in Memphis, he could have easily just stayed at their place if they were willing to put him up.
To get on the list, he would have had to pay listing fees, and go through a battery of tests and interviews in each region he wanted to be on the list for - this is *certainly* where his money helped him ("average" people's insurance only pays for a single listing in their home region, and tests + travel + interviews + time off work is out of the reach of many regular folks), but there is no requirement that he have a residence in the region to get listed - just that he be able to travel to the transplant location within a certain time frame (this is where that private jet comes in handy, too).
While I usually see the worst in people, Steve Jobs was extremely secretive about his health. Perhaps he got this shell company so that people wouldn't start to investigate why he was buying a house in Tennessee?
Since when is American health care system about "fair"? If you really wanted that, you'd have public healthcare long ago.
I read another possible answer to the "Why Tennessee?" question.
That article back then said, that, unlike most states in the U.S., Tennessee doesn't require a patient to be a resident of the state in order to be entered to the recipients' list.
It was required that when a trasplant organ was available and person X was on top of the list, this person should be at the TN transplant centre in 24 24 hours or even much less (don't remember the exact period of time that was stated). Otherwise (when nor showing up in time) the patient would be re-scheduled back to the bottom of the list.
In Jobs' case, this latter requirement was easily met by means of a nice private Gulfstream business jet, of course.
Also referring to Jobs, a transplant surgeon said in an interview that in his area all patients with a medical history of cancer would be generally excluded from getting a donor liver at all, due to the fact that there weren't enough livers available for all the patients without any cancer history.
so it is fair that everyone should pay the same amount even if some people need more care?
Yes, so long as people don't actively do something that obviously and significantly negatively affects their health (like smoking, or, say, parkour). When they do, they should pay more if they require treatment as a consequence.
There are problems with the American system, but this isn't one of them. The organs have to be transplanted within hours of being harvested. Steve Jobs was willing and able to travel thousands of miles at the drop of a hat to get there in time. It's not reasonable or feasible to do that for everyone.
Prohibiting him from getting the organ equally makes no sense. It's based on need, so he was the one with the most need who could get there.
Just bump up the tax on cigarettes to pay for the additional medical costs.
Might actually stop some people buying them.
Duh. Thats not an argument against universal health care.