GOP and Media Blitz Cannot Overturn Laws of Nature
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Sarah Murnaghan, the ten year old with end-stage cystic fibrosis, who has in the past two weeks endured two lung transplants, surgery to repair a paralyzed diaphragm, a trachea operation and pneumonia is dying. This is not the time for euphemisms and pretending otherwise, when confronting reality might halt even more surgeries and other painful procedures. This little girl needs and deserves some modicum of peace and acceptance. Instead, the Mother's latest post on Facebook remarked that Sarah was "taking little steps." Well actually the child was immobilized in a drug-induced coma. I cannot blame the woman for the mental gyrations that come with unspeakable grief. If my child were in that situation I would be in worst shape. But I do fault FOX News and the GOP for exploiting this woman's tragedy to the point of setting in motion a legal precedent, whereby courts, and media-generated public sympathy could overrule medical decisions on who should receive organ transplants.
The mother, Janet Murnaghan, believed that gathering 370,000 signatures on a petition, going to court and staging a media blitz would save her daughter's life. She succeeded in forcing the medical establishment to put her daughter at the head of the list for an exceedingly scarce commodity - lungs. But alas, the courts, petitions, and public relations wield inordinate amounts of power in our society. However, they do not control the laws of nature and biology. Given the child's deteriorating medical condition it turns out that the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN), which sets up rules to determine who receives organs, and the Obama administration, who enforced these rules, were not the death panels that Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh and FOX News claimed them to be. The OPTN consisted of rational, well trained medical researchers who having studied medical outcomes, came up with the fairest system they could devise for distributing life-giving but scarce human organs. And Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sibelius, although vilified by conservatives, has shown herself to be one of the most courageous members of the Obama Administration.
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The Forbidden Cure for Cystic Fibrosis, Sickle-Cell Anemia and Tay-Sachs
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| Sarah Murnaghan with Mother |
The mother, Janet Murnaghan, believed that gathering 370,000 signatures on a petition, going to court and staging a media blitz would save her daughter's life. She succeeded in forcing the medical establishment to put her daughter at the head of the list for an exceedingly scarce commodity - lungs. But alas, the courts, petitions, and public relations wield inordinate amounts of power in our society. However, they do not control the laws of nature and biology. Given the child's deteriorating medical condition it turns out that the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN), which sets up rules to determine who receives organs, and the Obama administration, who enforced these rules, were not the death panels that Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh and FOX News claimed them to be. The OPTN consisted of rational, well trained medical researchers who having studied medical outcomes, came up with the fairest system they could devise for distributing life-giving but scarce human organs. And Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sibelius, although vilified by conservatives, has shown herself to be one of the most courageous members of the Obama Administration.
RELATED POSTS:
The Forbidden Cure for Cystic Fibrosis, Sickle-Cell Anemia and Tay-Sachs
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