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Apple To Encourage Organ Donation With Health App (cnet.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Apple announced today that its updated Health app, which will be available as part of iOS 10, will allow people to sign-up to be organ donors. The app will use its Medical ID feature, which has been used in the past to keep track of medical and health information, to include the ability to register as a donor of organs, eyes and tissues. The registrations will be forwarded to the National Donate Life Registry, an organization managed by Donate Life of America. All you need to do is tap the registration button in the Health app to volunteer as an organ donor. That adds your status as a donor to an "emergency information" screen that can appear even when the phone is locked. Tapping another button brings up information on organ donation. The demand for organs greatly exceeds the supply, as more than 120,000 Americans are currently waiting for a transplant -- every 10 minutes a new person is added to that waiting list, according to Apple. The feature is currently available for developers, but will be rolling out to the public in the public beta soon.
He received a liver transplant (possibly jumped the queue to get to it by buying a house, who knows).
He died when he did because of three things:
1) he had pancreatic cancer. It's so hard to detect that a donor pancreas -- were that to be possible -- would be irrelevant, because it has often spread or become very serious; even with the least worst form of pancreatic cancer, the secondary impact on your health is dramatic even if it doesn't spread. This makes any subsequent treatment take a heavier toll.
2) he delayed cancer treatment (let's be kind to him and not criticise why, but he did), worsening his outcome, even though he was lucky enough to have that least-worst, treatable form of pancreatic cancer.
3) part of the process of his cancer treatment was a Whipple procedure (a modified one I think). Life expectancy after Whipple is on average about five years; it's a seriously dramatic procedure that comes with many, many major side-effects, not least possible liver cancer developed independent of the original cancer.
Even if he hadn't delayed his treatment, the Whipple procedure might have given him only a few years. Another organ donation at that point would have been unlikely.
Shitty bad luck and a bad but forgiveable personal judgement call. My mother died of the least treatable form of pancreatic cancer, after putting up quite a fight. It's a fucking terrifying disease. Don't make crappy jokes, donate to pancreatic cancer research.
captcha: miseries. Too fucking right.