TUESDAY, June 23, 2009 (Health.com) — This week it was reported that Steven Jobs, the CEO and cofounder of Apple, underwent a liver transplant two months ago. One detail concerning Jobs’s transplant seemed odd: The surgery took place at a hospital in Tennessee, some 2,000 miles from Jobs’s home in northern California. Why Tennessee?
The answer sheds light on the intricacies of the organ transplant system, as well as why it’s sometimes easier for people with significant financial resources to get an organ transplant. (Jobs’s estimated net worth: $5.7 billion.)
Livers are a scarce resource. In any given year, only about one-third of the people on the national transplant waiting list receive one, and as of late June, more than 16,000 people were on the list.
Yet it sometimes seems that celebrities in need end up at the front of the line when they need a transplants, and people often assume they get preferential treatment. (Rumors about special treatment circulated after baseball player Mickey Mantle’s liver transplant in 1995, for example.)
The truth is more complicated. No one can actually buy an organ in the United States (legally, that is). But getting a liver transplant, it turns out, is a lot like getting into college. Once you’re on the waiting list, your chances of getting off it depend largely on your personal circumstances—how sick you are and whether you are a good donor match. But getting on the list in the first place—or more than one list, as the case may be—requires resources and know-how that most people don’t have.
Next page: Can some people “cut the line”?
Comments (4)
Did Steve Jobs’s Money Buy Him A Faster Liver Transplant? Vote
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There’s one question that nobody seems to be asking about Steve Jobs and his liver transplant: is Steve Jobs a registered organ donor?
It’s not fair to give an organ to a non-donor as long as there is a donor who needs it. But about 50% of the organs transplanted in the United States go to people who haven’t agreed to donate their own organs when they die. It’s no wonder there’s such a large organ shortage. If organs were allocated first to organ donors, more people would agree to donate and fewer people would die waiting for transplants.
Anyone who would like to donate their organs to other organ donors can join LifeSharers at http://www.lifesharers.org or by calling 1-888-ORGAN88. Membership is free. There is no age limit, parents can enroll their minor children, and no one is excluded due to any pre-existing medical condition.
Regarding the question of whether Steve Jobs is a registered donor, we should hope that he is not. Anyone who has been diagnosed with an metastatic cancer, such as Jobs’ pancreatic cancer, is inelibible to donate blood or tissues. There have been cases in which tissues were transplanted from dead people to patients, and later it was determined that the donors had undiagnosed cancers that had already invaded the grafted tissues. Transplanted cancer cells can spread in recipients quickly due to the immunosuppressive drugs these people take to prevent rejection of the grafts.
Any one qualifying for an organ transplant should NOT be an organ donor. From a medical stand point it makes no sense. If you’re sick enough to be on the list, you shouldn’t be donating.
SR, RN