“Someone lives and someone dies,” shrugged Health and Human Services
Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, when passing bureaucratic
judgment upon the life of a 10-year-old Pennsylvania girl who will die in a
matter of weeks unless she gets a lung transplant. And a lot of someones
owe Sarah Palin a huge apology for doubting her prescient warning about “death
panels.”
Sarah Murnaghan has Cystic Fibrosis and is
fighting for her life at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia as she awaits
a life-saving lung transplant. Doctors believe she has only a few weeks to live.
The Department of
Health and Human Services mandated that organ allocation policies must be based
on medical need rather than waiting time or other considerations.
[Although] Sarah’s
need is acute, because she is only 10 and not 12, she can’t [even] be on the list to receive an adult organ.
Pediatric organ donors are in short supply and there is little chance that
Sarah will receive a pediatric lung in time.
[PA Senators Pat Toomey and Pat Meehan, who
are soliciting the DHS on Sarah's behalf,] are not asking for an exemption for
Sarah, but rather asking the Secretary to follow rules available to her now.
The lawmakers wrote that the Secretary has two options specified in the
existing policy governing the organ transplant network. She can set aside the
under-12 policy on an emergency basis. Or she can direct the organ donor
network to conduct a pilot program to add to the research about the suitability
of adult organs transplanted into children.
' We’re going to let a kid die over red tape.
Somebody needs to stand up and say this isn’t right. This is a human issue this
isn’t politics.’
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