Organ Transplant Debacle

[John Ho]

Yeah but wouldn't you want to differentiate between honest mistakes and misconduct? The little girl's case seems to be an innocent error. You can't go overboard on this stuff. Doctors are human too. By all accounts the surgeon who messed was excellent.

[ripdog]

John,

Of course I considered the fact that this family had just lost a daughter. I made it clear that I understood any reluctance to donating her organs. But sometimes you have to bite down and just do the right thing, regardless of the pain. That includes donating the organs AND owning up to the fact that you're in this country illegally. Just because the situation is fraught with tragic circumstances doesn't mean I should ignore the facts. If I were to make the same choices they did, I don't know if I could live with myself when reality set in.

In response to your closing paragraph--man, what a cheap shot. Did you feel the need to qualify yourself? Apparently so. My post was pointing at two facts--the disgusting decision against donating organs and the fact that if they were law abiding citizens, they'd be watching her die in Mexico instead of her having a shot a survival here. I'm sorry it didn't work out for them. Your judgement of me is way off base, and I think your using your ailing partner in to disparage me says more about you than me.

[ripdog]

If they're not here illegally, then they have every right to seek damages--and I'd encourage that.

[ripdog]

I wouldn't be opposed to nailing the offending hospital to the wall, just in this case I don't think (under my apparent misunderstanding of the facts) that the victims should be allowed to collect.

[scalf]

a few thoughts...the young woman deserved medical care, received it, a tragedy occurred, now how to best go on???

the lawsuits will be to make her family whole and to punish these incompetent docs, so there is compensation to ease suffering of wronged parties, and punish sloppy care...

duke med center is one of the world's best...the surgeon spent at least 4 years college..4 years med school, 4-5 years general surgery residency..,(these ain't fun people you live in a hospital and take care of really sick people). 2-3 years cardiac-thoracic surgery fellowship, 1-3 years transplant/research fellow...i bet he wasn't just a b student either...lol..

but now all that will be remembered is he made a mistake performing a miraculous cure...what will be the net result...??

the lawyers will take home about half the money involved...a humongous hourly rate...which will not go to victim's family, or to medical care, but will intensify further lawsuits....there will be another check in an already cumbersome system, making health care more expensive and un wieldy....but docs will still keep trying..

i wish this mistake had not happened, but is it really malicious, negligent care; or is it just another example of a key concept of risk management...no matter what ya do...bad things are gonna happen..

the net result is a huge transfer of money from health care to legal professionals, more paperwork, more additional checks in a time-sensitive siruation..higher costs for all..

there has to be a change to medical legal boards who can make real decisions regarding issues which laypeople really cannot understand..gl

[scalf]

ray, do you reallyfeel that sloppy medicine is practiced by the transplant team at duke medical center...that these people who have literally given up their lives (youth anyway)..have no incentive to care respectfully for their patient...that without the threat of a lawsuit, that they just won't care about great care??it's absurd...but my question to you ray is....???
if threat of torts is so powerfull an incentive to practice better medicine.(the current system)..why, why, are there more and more expensive lawsuits???cause it ain't working that's why...gl

[brad]

true but how does a foreigner deserve to come here and get free med (charitable foundation or whatever) for a *speculative* and extremely costly surgery? (when most americans get shortchanged on preventitive checkups / dental)

looks like its all just a big scam who can grab the most.

[scalf]

[img]/forums/images/icons/frown.gif[/img] it is a real sadness that the fact this person was not a legal resident of usa, seemingly means she doesn.t deserve care or rights...she was a resident of planet earth, and i personally find it uplifting that such extraordinary attempts were made to save this tremendously important life...i think this is the real paradox...she clearly would have perished without these experts training, studying for ten years minimum,,after med school, to be able to provide such a loving, caring service...and end up being villified and maliciously prosecuted...she was a real person..a tragedy occurred..there really is no way to make family whole again...jmho gl [img]/forums/images/icons/heart.gif[/img]

[brad]

yeah well a lot of americans are out of work, and they see their taxes spent on hopeless operations for foreigners when they cant even take their kids to doctor for easy/cheap treatable stuff.

face it, its a bunch of crap. (and many community clinics are closing down they cant handle load imposed by illegal immigrants,(which doesnt help them either))

[John Cole]

ripdog,

Yes, you might be right, and I did consider what I might sound like before I posted. I'm sorry if I offended you. But, I reread your post a number of times before I posted what I did. Perhaps I was misjudging your post, but both the tone and tenor of indicated much more to me than a simple argument based from factual evidence. I didn't say they were now lining up for their payoff--you did. And this is how you started your post.

What do you expect when you begin with such inflammatory language? Perhaps when I read, "I say kick their asses back to Mexico," I missed the logical part of your argument. You can't have it both ways. You can't claim that you've made a reasonable, logical argument and use the language you've used. Do I think you're a racist or a bad person? No. I've read enough of your other posts to know differently.

But, I also wanted to give you a perspective that perhaps you didn't share.

As far as "using" Mary to make a point. You don't know me well enough to even suggest such a thing, and now it's you who should apologize.

John