If the organ donor system ran its service like Steve runs the app store, they would have banned him from the list for moving to another state to artificially increase his chances at getting a liver.Reply
If you won't even consider donating your organs, you should not be on the list to get one. I realize some people have religious objections to donating organs. That's fine. But don't try to line-jump me when need an organ.Reply
So what he is saying is 400 people died because they could not get across country due to the inability to buy/afford a plane ticket on such short notice?
Well according to Jetblue.com if you buy a ticket last minute right now from JFK to San Francisco (the farthest distance I could think of) its 437 dollars. Of course it could be cheaper if you need to go somewhere closer.
Multiply 437 dollars by 400 (the amount of people died) All that needs to be spent to save these people is 174,800 dollars a year.
I'm not rocket scientist, but raising that money from the state is hard to do, so it might be best opening some sort of non-profit organization...
Man if only we knew someone who had reason to donate to such a cause and who was super rich where 174,800 dollars is nothing to them..
Oh shit, I can't think of anyone, how long ago did that CEO of Apple Co. Steve Jobs encounter this, 3-4 months ago? And we still can't think of anyone? Shit this is hard...I'm gonna be racking my brain all weekend! Maybe Steve Jobs CEO of Apple Co. can help us think of someone...Reply
@Incoherent: He said 400 people died waiting. Not that there were 400 livers waiting for them. Doesn't matter how much money Jobs puts into it, still the same amount of livers. Instead of trying to come down on the guy, why don't you sign your donor card and encourage others to sign theirs as well.Reply
@Incoherent: First off, at a bare minimum buying a commercial plane ticket will add 30 minutes, if not an hour to the trip time. Second a commercial plane can not fly cross country in 4 hours - a private jet flying close to mach1 can do it in just about 4 hours + you just walk onto your jet, file a flight plan and you are off. Any normal human, even with funds for full priced tickets is looking at 6-7 hours to get cross country...at best and then only if it is a direct route to the airport you need to go to. A private jet can land at more airfields than a commercial large jet. Also steve was probably able to fly a helicopter to the airport both ways cutting down on the time more.Reply
@Incoherent: Incoherent is right. Do you seriously think that if all that stood between a dying person and life was 450 dollars that they wouldn't spend the money themselves?Reply
@Incoherent: Travel expenses are the least people are worried about. Do you know how much a liver transplant even costs. Lets talk about the costs. $523,000, thats the total including all the hospital expenses; times that by the 400 people who died waiting comes out to roughly $209 million!
wtf do travel expenses have to do with this, if they cant afford a plane ticket, how are they going to come up with half a million dollars. the real problem is getting a liver to transplant and half a million dollars. Whos willing to donate that kind of money these days. Knocking on Jobs doesnt help your argument. Like the commenter before me said, become a donor and encourage others to do the same.Reply
My wife donated a kidney to her mother. It gave her an inside look at how fucked up the whole system is. When a dirtbag country like Iran does something like this smarter and arguably in a MORE moral way than we do (look it up in Super Freakonomics), we know we have some serious idiots running this country.
Become a donor. Advocate for a sane system that rewards donors and saves lives--you only need one kidney to live; the other is a redundancy.
And give thanks for Steve Jobs.
Now that he's been saved by a donor, he, with all his clout and money, can be a powerful advocate. I make a living using software and hardware that likely wouldn't exist (or at least wouldn't be as good) if Steve Jobs hadn't been born to ride software programmers and hardware designers like they were rented mules.
My 8-year-old autistic son has his best moments using Apps on an iPhone.
I often tell people that if I had to use Windows PCs to make a living, I'd abandon my career, and I am not fucking joking about that.
Steve Jobs has personally made my life better in a quantifiable way. I have never understood the human tendency to want to trash people who are smarter, harder-working and richer than the rest of us. I admire the guy and wish I had his drive, intelligence (and money, of course).
Steve, I wish you decades of happiness and health. But please, can we have the new Macbook Pros already?Reply
@ricklATL: "I often tell people that if I had to use Windows PCs to make a living, I'd abandon my career, and I am not fucking joking about that. "
Explain to me what is so horrible and different from a Mac and a PC? What sort of career demands that you use an overly expensive mac thats does everything a PC does and so much LESS? I just find it so hard to get into the mind of Apple fanboys..Reply
@ricklATL: You should give PCs a shot, they have come a long way.
I grew up with an Apple II and went through every windows OS from 3.1 to current (including OS/2 and win ME!) and I have to say Windows 7 is really pretty slick- I think you might like it.Reply
Steve got his liver because he is famous and has a lot of money and resources. When you have a famous name, lots of money, your lawyer making all your calls and filing the paperwork and an Apple provided Gulfstream Corporate jet waiting its a lot easier. Any person of normal means would have been one of the 400 who died.
And now he's speaking out about the system that saved his life because he's rich? The system was setup for people like Steve. If you don't have the money and resources to jump through the hoops you die.Reply
@jmith: yea, that's what he's saying. He's saying he is lucky he had all the resources to fly across the country within 4 hours notice. He's saying that is *not* a great system for everyone else.Reply
@jmith: You're right. He gamed the system. Because he could afford to fly anywhere with no notice, he could afford to be on multiple donor lists at once.
He didn't get special treatment because he's famous, he was able to take advantage of how the system worked because he had money. They're two completely different things.
And why shouldn't he speak out about it? Just because you make money doesn't mean you can't also work to make effective change for all.Reply
@jmith: Are you telling him that he shouldn't say anything about the system's faults because the faults benefit him? He noticed something wrong with the system and he said something even though saying something will not help him in the future. If he is saying something to make it so those 400 people don't have to die next year why are you complaining?Reply
@jmith: You're being obtuse. That's exactly why he's talking about this. He said he was lucky and had access that other people didn't. He wants to change this system. His motivations are good.Reply
One of the biggest problems with getting good organs are the families of the deceased. Even if you filled out an organ donor card and have the sticker on your driver's license, families still can say, "No!" and they do with hideous regularity.
What we need to do is better explain to people as a whole, why organ donation is the right thing to do. I know he was your Dad/Son/Brother or whomever, but even though he's dead, someone else can live and part of your lost family member will live on as well.
My Grandmother lived for over 20 years on a donated liver. I would never have gotten to know her any where near as well and most of my cousins wouldn't have known her at all. The donor was a guy in his twenties. I don't know his name, but I will always be thankful to him.Reply
@yertle: You don't ever tell the shareholders and/or clients until the the principle person/people of the company is/are actually dead. Otherwise the stock tanks for no reason.Reply
For people with chronic liver disease, their need is based on something called the 'MELD' score. The Meld score is calculated based on certain blood tests, and is a rough estimate of how urgently the patient needs a liver. As for whether the liver needs to be "matched" to the recipient - most studies show that in fact, it does not. Mortality is not that much better with more "matched" livers.
The system also takes into account personal and social factors. The fact is that the post-transplant regimen is quite intense. There are A LOT of medications that need to be taken and A LOT of followup needed after the operation. So, if someone seems even the slightest bit irresponsible in that regard, they will not get a liver. This, obviously, tends to favor the rich and discriminate against the socioeconomically challenged who may not be able to prove a track-record of reliability as easily. It also favors people who have extensive family support, b/c patients with advanced liver disease tend to be 'encephalopathic' - meaning that they are mentally and cognitively affected by the disease, and so they cannot really take care of themselves. This is reversed, once the new liver is transplanted, but patients in that situation cannot advocate for themselves and often need family to advocate for them.
As for paying a ton of money to charter a flight - it's not really practical. This is how it works: An organ becomes available (b/c the donor has died), the patient is called and is told to get to the hospital. While he is waiting, the surgeons remove the organ from the donor. What often happens next is that they realize that the liver is not good enough for transplant and the patient is sent home sans new liver. I should also mention that it is the same surgeons who will ultimately perform the transplant who go to procure the organ from the donor, sometimes requiring helicopter/small jet flights to get there and back in time.
What people are saying about the 10 (and last I checked, it's 10, not 12) geographical regions is true. (part of the rationale is as I said above - the same surgeons do the procurement and the actual transplant). The patient can register in as many regions as he/she wants, as long as he/she can get to the hospital in that region in a timely manner. The longer the liver is outside of the body, the less viable it becomes. But even if the patient registers in all 10, he/she is he/she is not that sick, he/she won't get a liver no matter what b/c there will always be sicker people ahead of him/her. The longer he/she goes without the liver, the sicker he/she gets and the higher his/her meld score gets -- until it's high enough that he/she gets a liver (in theory).
It actually does not sound like Jobs did anything wrong - he just registered in all the regions and was sick enough to get a liver in a region that is less 'competative' for a liver - i.e, where there are the fewest people on the list.Reply
@NorwoodIsMyHero: "There's no government program or option that can change that." Not true. An opt-out system mandated by the government nationally would increase the organ supply exponentially.Reply
@NorwoodIsMyHero: Like spam?? Yeah, except instead of spam, it only affects you once you are DEAD, and may save someone's life.
And as far as I could tell, of all the major religions only Shinto is expressly against it. Sorry Shintos, you'd have to make all that effort to check a box on a form.
If you don't make a will, the government is required to step in and it can get complicated for the surviving family. How is this any different?Reply
@Dahamma: I agree with you in principal, but your corpse is considered private property.
In all seriousness this would be a violation of the Constitution. It would require some court to rule for it, or federal laws to be passed. Neither of which will happen anytime soon.
It would be too easy to say that this is a restriction on freedom of religion. All an ACLU lawyer would have to say is:
"So if we are having opt-in boxes on freedom of religion, what's to stop Big Brother from making opt-in boxes for freedom of speech, or freedom of the press."
And that case would get dismissed faster than you can say "Objection!"Reply
@NorwoodIsMyHero: I agree it's never going to happen, but it's actually a surprisingly interesting hypothetical question...
My little bit of research came up with:
"a property right does not exist in a corpse. For the purpose of burial, however, the corpse of a human being is considered to be property or quasi-property, the rights to which are held by the surviving spouse or next of kin. This right cannot be conveyed and does not exist while the decedent is living. Following burial, the body is considered part of the ground in which it is placed."
So as far as religion is concerned, it would sound like the religion of the deceased really doesn't matter, as a property is only a "quasi-property" of someone else until burial. So if you believe your body is sacred after death but your wife thinks you are full of crap, too bad for you. Also, I only brought up religion in that I couldn't really find any that considered it a religious issue. And in any case, if it's really a property issue, religious wishes would be irrelevant ("I am religiously opposed to property taxes!" doesn't fly :)
It's also illegal to sell body parts, so it's both clearly not considered normal property, and the government is already controlling it in some way. And there isn't anything specific in the Constitution about it, so it would be interesting to see what legal precedents exist...
Anyway, ok, enough rambling. I just think it would be an interesting if hugely inflammatory law to pass - which means CA is almost bound to try it some day!Reply
@NorwoodIsMyHero: Spain is one many countries where this works well. If political pallatableness is your litmus test of what constitutes a worthwhile endeavor, then keep on keepin on. Heck, if either the left or right would vehemently object, it must be garbage.Reply
Mr. Jobs, perhaps you could entice your clientele into registering as organ donors and help generate publicity for both Apple and organ donations by offering a small discount during a specific time for those who register or re-register as organ donors at Apple stores.Reply
@DeadWriter: I'd like to second that- - it's a great idea. Maybe have an Apple sale - something like 20% off coupon for organ donors. It would certainly be worth a trip to the DMV if you're going to buy a MBP.Reply
@DeadWriter: The only problem is that the medical community requires that NO remuneration comes from becoming a donor. This can easily be misconstrued as just that.Reply
@jeevesofRKdia thinks he: There is no remuneration for a few reasons. 1.) No organ is donated, the premium is for registering. 2.) The potential donor hasn't donated yet and could refuse any time down the line, including removing her/his name from the registry at any time. Another way to look at this is the premium isn't for donating an organ, but for donating your time and information to be listed on an organ donation list.
In general I am against offering premiums as fund raising or social action. It's a little less cut and dry with social action, for instance offering coffee and food to volunteers.
Offering premiums is generally a bad idea for charities. It leads to premium addiction, or the association with a gift in return for a gift. It generally is not cost effective. (Galas sometimes cost nearly as much or more than they bring in!) It also sends a mixed messages about the charity, which I wont get into.
There are exceptions. The United Way and other NPO/NGOs often offer shirts in return for service during particular events. This ends up being more a form inexpensive advertising. Then again, with the United Way, it's about service- not immediate fundraising. Also, nobody is doing it for the shirt- well mostly.
I decided and took action to be an organ donor when I started driving. My significant other and family knows my wishes. My hope is that if I have no usable organs that my body is donated to the local city collage, which needs cadavers for training students.
There is a whole slue of reasons I think this would be a good pairing, but I don't want to go on. Rather, I should do what I have wanted to do for some time and put this all to paper.
[Post Script: As of this moment, no reply from Mr. Jobs.]Reply
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