Recently a 57-year-old man received a breakthrough operation. He was bedridden for several months and desperately needed a heart transplant. However, he had several health conditions which made him not suitable for the operation. In a last attempt to save the patient’s life, the Food and Drug Administration gave permission to attempt a genetically modified pig heart transplant for the first time in history.
The operation was successful. Not only was the patient saved, but the medicine came closer to solving the problem of organ shortages. Unfortunately, the story is not as happy as it might seem.
Three days later, a woman was reading the article about this successful operation. She saw the name of the patient and froze. This same man was guilty of stabbing her brother in the neck seven times in 1988. After being attacked, her brother survived but was left paralyzed for his whole life. He spent 19 years of his life in a wheelchair and died from a stroke at the age of 40.
The woman wished that “the heart had gone to a deserving recipient”, especially considering that 17 people die each day in America due to a shortage in organs for transplant.
The team of doctors didn’t share her opinion. Arthur Caplan, a bioethics professor at New York University, said: “The key principle in medicine is to treat anyone who is sick, regardless of who they are. We are not in the business of sorting sinners from saints. Crime is a legal matter.” The hospital officials added that "Any other standard of care would set a dangerous precedent and would violate the ethical and moral values that underpin the obligation physicians and caregivers have to all patients in their care."