Should alcohol abusers be allowed liver transplants?

[LONDONER]

Given the stortage of organ doners in the UK, do you think that people who have abused their livers through drnking should be allowed liver transplans when people who have never abuse alcohol might be more deserving?

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/health/new...053937.ece

[MisterTinkles]

Yeah, thats just wrong.

I think anyone who wants to give up an organ should be able to sell it to whomever they want, at whatever price that they want.

People who kill themselves slowly with alcohol and drugs should not be able to get replacement parts.

[Woollyhats]

I feel like they should be - they're people too, and to be honest, we've all exposed ourselves to various environmental hazards.

But you're right that it's not right to give transplants to people that have blatantly destroyed their bodies, when people that are suffering at no fault of their own are in need.

I would be okay with a compromise, to be on the waiting list for an organ one must not smoke/drink. If they're a confirmed drinker/alcoholic they also have to attend a program/workshop on quitting.

That way there's a good chance they won't go wasting the gift of someone's organ...but they're free to live their lives after they get an organ too. After all, it's not like you can cut out someone's heart if they start smoking after they get one.... ._.

[megumidesu]

I feel like they should be - they're people too, and to be honest, we've all exposed ourselves to various environmental hazards.

But you're right that it's not right to give transplants to people that have blatantly destroyed their bodies, when people that are suffering at no fault of their own are in need.

I would be okay with a compromise, to be on the waiting list for an organ one must not smoke/drink. If they're a confirmed drinker/alcoholic they also have to attend a program/workshop on quitting.

That way there's a good chance they won't go wasting the gift of someone's organ...but they're free to live their lives after they get an organ too. After all, it's not like you can cut out someone's heart if they start smoking after they get one.... ._.

i totally agree with this ^

[Chimpy]

I'm quite hardline on this. No.

[ChadCoxRox]

Qualification for liver transplant is designed to avoid the subject of this post. It is NOT perfect and what you describe does happen "some" but not a great deal and nothing to the degree inferred by the thread. I've lost a couple dozen clients over the years to liver disease because of addiction and only one of them successful made it to the transplant process and he survives to this day in recovery. All the others never make it through the screening process. Most systems require medical clearance from appropriate specialists verifying addiction and behavioral health stability to even get on the wait lists. Then lots of collateral documentation is required to augment the system's own psychiatric/behavioral screening. It may not "look" like it from the outside looking in, but I can attest that "the system" WANTS you to bring any concerns forward to help reduce and avoid abuse.

[sillyboy86]

They're people, and they have a problem.
There's case and another kind of case, and one antoher etc... Very often alcohol is something more than a vicious behaviour like smoking cigarettes etc, alcohol is always a real problem, sometimes big.

I agree with Kuma, and I think that our society is currently underestimate these kind of problem, mainly for the single person 'victim' of the problem.

[Edward]

I think that would be a waste of an organ that could save someone who appreciate his/her life and whose health problems are not of his/her own doing. An alcohol abuser would probably continue with the old lifestyle until the new liver would stop working as well.

[East]

Alcoholism is a very real disease...not a choice. It is easy to say it is a choice for people who have never had the disease.

The problem is when you start qualifying who deserves medical treatment. For instance...the things that contribute to cancer...and heart disease...and obesity...and diabetes....and__________

Most of the people who have one or more of these and other diseases contributed to them on at least one level if they didn't follow the warnings that we all have heard.

It is a Pandora's Box.

[Bowyn Aerrow]

Alcoholism and drug addiction is usually a symptom of other disorders. Most (not all) substance abusers come from an 'interesting' life, child abuse, rape, trauma, and other lovely stuff that kicks off a long slow suicide.

Alcoholism and drug addiction is pretty high in the LGBT community, not because gay means you are a drunk, but because of the incredibly sadistic way the rest of the world has bullied and abused LGBT for being 'that way'.

But you are right, we should punish the drunk/drug addict for this mental/emotional issue they have - after all centuries of punishing mental/emotional disorders has proven effective this is why we still resort to sending our mentally/emotionally defectives to houses of bedlam for water boarding, electric shock therapy and other torture methods to remove those demons that afflict those sad, sad, mad people.

So yes, we need to deny livers to the alcoholic/drug addict as a form of corrective punishment for their demons.