Giving young people dibs on organ transplant unfair
Oh, sure, the added years have brought some negatives from a physical standpoint. An aching knee often cuts short my time running on the treadmill. Caffeine after 6 p.m. ruins my sleep that night. Yet, mostly, now I try to treat time like fine wine so that it only gets better with age.
Well, it turns out that's not an attitude shared by everyone. Now I'm told that because I'm older, my life isn't as valuable as, say, someone who is 20 years younger. Using age alone as the criterion, I am not as worthy. That sure can get a person to start thinking that aging stinks big-time.
A proposal from the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network would give first dibs on kidney transplants to younger people. This change could occur by the end of the year.
This would be a dramatic switch from the way it works now, when the person who most needs a new kidney is selected first. Gender, race, sexual orientation, class -- all those things that often are unfair barriers in society -- don't exist under the current system. The person who needs a new kidney the most moves to the head of the class.
A lot of work has been done in recent years to help the public better understand what is involved in donating organs. The success rate of the actual kidney transplant procedure has improved dramatically. However, one cold reality remains: There just aren't enough kidneys available. According to the National Kidney Foundation's Web site, more than 89,000 Americans are waiting for a new kidney. In 2004, the latest year the Web site has stats on, 3,886 people died before a kidney was found for them.
I'll be upfront in admitting that I have a personal interest in the whole organ transplant procedure. I am a Type II diabetic who pretty much follows to the letter what one should do to combat the disease and its complications. Still, although doctors say it should never have happened to me, the disease already has attacked my kidneys.
Right now I'm in a holding pattern, but eventually I could find myself in the market for a new kidney. So that's why I like the current way recipients are chosen. I figure that I'd at least have a fighting chance at a new kidney.
What this proposed change says is: Too bad you didn't get sicker sooner. Instead of promoting a healthy lifestyle to combat the complications of chronic kidney disease, it's telling people it pays to be young and ill. How reckless.
Also, if today we decide that age is a good criterion, then what's to say we won't next be looking for a certain gender or race as a determining factor? African Americans and Latinos are at higher risks for developing chronic kidney disease in the first place. Maybe we should go to the head of the transplant class.
I really take offense that being older makes a person less valuable, less able to put a new kidney to good use. Thomas Edison obtained the last of his 1,093 patents at age 83. Katharine Hepburn took home her fourth Oscar at age 73. At that same age, Carl Sandburg was producing work worthy of his second Pulitzer Prize. Were they less productive after age 50?
No one has said that the current criteria for choosing kidney transplant recipients isn't working. Adding anything beyond need just opens the whole procedure to bias and preferential treatment. Do we really want to start acting as judge and jury as to whose life is worth saving and whose isn't?