Young Man Denied Heart Transplant Because He's Autistic

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http://blogs.babble.com/strollerderby/2 ... -autistic/

I'm not sure what to say other than that this is horrifying, and that it seemed to need to be linked to here.

those a***oles!! That's totally warped. Completely unjustified. And it reveals a shocking institutional bias against those on the spectrum, obviously, the other conditions they list for not making him a good transplant candidate are meant to cloud the autism which I have little doubt is the real reason. It's just a covert way of condoning the elimination of autistics from society.

Autistic people and those with mental illnesses don't deserve a heart transplant as much as a normal, neurotypical people. They are inferior, after all. <-- This was sarcasm.

This reveals gross ignorance on part of the medical profession, and a society that devalues atypical people. Never mind that people with mental illness and autism are historic overachievers that have contributed the best creative efforts known to all humanity,

To the Universe, I hope I never need a vital organ. If I do, I would never be able to get one given all my underlying mental conditions.

This is so very disturbing.

They obviously think he's not worth saving.

Organs are in short supply. They think someone else is more worthy. It's a judgement call.

And the people who made that judgment call are heartless and have terrible judgment.

And there is another point. If you study the history of the eugenics movement, the medical profession was at the forefront of the notion that we could 'clean up the gene pool'. They've stopped talking about it openly - but that's still how they're acting.

The judgement may be heartless, but it is still valid for scarce resources. Why not give the organ to someone "less defective" who can put it to better use? There aren't enough for everyone.

Even if it were true the medicines could cause some issues for the man, it shouldn't change the fact that he needs a heart. Find something else than can work. This does definitely piss me off. Though i wonder if anyone in that hospital even knows what it means to be autistic... I am sure the parents can push through it. Sue the poop out of them!

Now, we could play the Thomas Jefferson card, or the Jane Austen card, or the Carl Sagan card, but none of that should be necessary.

Paul Corby is a twenty-three year-old young man who seems like a thoroughly alright guy. Yes, he should be put on the transplant waiting list.

http://blogs.babble.com/strollerderby/2 ... -autistic/

Doctors perhaps could do a better job of respectfully asking families of a person who just died to consider organ donation. And families could perhaps do a better job of being more open to this idea.

Following is an account of how the father was asked to consider donating his daughter's heart for the very first successful heart transplantation. (I think the recipient lived about a week.)

It would have been better if the man had not been sedated. But what it is, is what it is. It's a real world textured situation. And I love the part at the end, where the doctors stress that he should take as much time as he needs and that they will understand if he doesn't give his consent.

You know, I think organ donation is a good idea. But the more stories I read about bigoted doctors denying organs to perfectly healthy, decent people because of an evil agenda that should have died with Hitler (well, it should have died long before that, but I think my point is clear enough), the more hesitation I feel about the whole idea. If I might not be fit to receive an organ, why bother donating the ones I don't need. I'm not saying that's the final decision I'd make - but bigoted doctors do a lot to push me in that direction.

And, yes, I consider it bigotry. Eugenics is bigotry. Assigning "value" to those without autism as somehow "worth more" is vile and evil and as irrational as racism. If the doctor who made this decision were in front of me, I'd say as much to her face. Joseph Mengele was a "doctor", too, and used "medical" grounds to justify the monstrous decisions he made.

On face value that is incredibly, ridiculously messed up. If there are not some pretty powerful factors which change the dynamic of the situation greatly which aren't mentioned in that blog post then I have no idea how the people responsible for this decision sleep at night. These kind of things make me wish I believed in a god and an afterlife because then I could have some reasonable expectation that these people might one day have a punishment commensurate with their callousness.

I totally sympathise with your point but the fact that you have a strong enough moral sense to consider these things in such depth suggests to me that, despite how twisted this kind of thing appears, you would still make the right decision and donate your organs for the benefit of somebody else.

The next time somebody tells me that I shouldn't be so cynical and that the world isn't such a bad place after all I will tell them about this story.

Yes, you're right. I don't see any reason patients should suffer for their doctors' crimes. But it does seem to me that decisions such as this will probably cause at least a few people to refuse to donate. And there are decent odds that the number of potential organs lost due to this decision is larger than the number that would be "wasted" on people with autism - or any other "defect" - who need transplants.

Since the decision is indefensible to begin with, and in addition, the one excuse propping it up is the scarcity of organs for transplant, I think that's a very relevant consideration. (I don't think you'd argue with that, by the way, just pointing it out for anyone reading this thread.)

A person with depression or anxiety would be "more defective" in the sense that they function better in our society than someone without it. Should someone be deemed less worthy of receiving a life saving organ transplant because of these disorders? What about a person with a high IQ versus someone with an average IQ. Should the person with the higher IQ have higher priority? Having a higher IQ has been correlated with living a longer life, making healthier life style decisions, doing better in school, and being more successful at most occupations, so you could say the person with the higher IQ is "less defective" or better suited to life in our society than the one with the average IQ. Well what if the person with the high IQ is a terrible human being who uses his intelligence to manipulate people and get his own way but the person with the average IQ is very giving and donates lots of time and money to helping people in society. In that case should people take a moral exam before being considered for organ transplants? Anyways I think the answer to all of these questions is of course not.......we humans (including doctors) have no right to decide which of our fellow humans is more worthy of life than another....and if we did there is no obvious best way to do this. If you deny a life saving procedure to someone because of a neurological disorder you are determining the person is worth less than another person because of their disorder.....and it's a slippery slope from there. The only consideration about who should be on a transplant list is how likely the person is to have a successful operation....beyond that it should be a random process if it comes down to choosing between candidates........one should not be deemed more worthy of life than another.