Thanks Paul, no problem. As an aside,can I assume that everyone who’s made their views known so plainly has registered themselves on the NHS organ donors’ list as I’ve done ?

Paul,if you’d read my post properly you’d have seen I said my father-in-law,not my own father.Oh,and by the way,if I thought I was talking to someone about their Dad’s death,I wouldn’t dream of using the expression ” tough luck”.How would you like it ?

But she wouldn’t be depriving anyone else of a transplant,because the liver she’s being offered is part of her father’s own liver. It’s not as though he’d be offering it on the open market to other more worthy recipients.
I’d like to take up Paul’s point that she screwed up through choice. Surely everyone does that anyway ? Isn’t it part of living in a civilised society that we accept this,and treat everyone with equal respect ?
Consider this very specific example :
My father-in-law died slowly and painfully from lung cancer,having been a heavy smoker for seventy years.
For at least thirty of those seventy years,it had been proven beyond doubt that cigarettes caused lung cancer,yet he continued smoking.
When it became obvious what he was suffering from,would anyone expect the doctors to tell him that it was self-inflicted,he’d chosen to take the risk himself,”screwed up through choice “,and that he didn’t deserve to be treated ?

I’m not portraying her as a poor mother of two,so I don’t know where you got that idea from . If you’re so convinced that a person doesn’t deserve to live that you’d say it to their face,then I don’t see the problem in repeating your belief to anyone else,including their children.

So Paul,I assume you’d be prepared to stand face to face with this young woman and tell her she doesn’t deserve to live ? Or to tell her two children that Mummy’s pretty stupid,so we’re going to let her die because of that ?

There’s no question of her taking a liver from donated organs ahead of other,more “deserving” people.If you listen to the video,her father clearly says that his daughter would prefer to die rather than take someone else’s place on the transplant list.
I don’t condone the way she abused the wonderful chance she’d been given,but come on people,where’s your compassion ? Am I the only one who says straight away she should be given a second chance,just because I’m a lot older and a different sex from everyone else who’s posted here ? For goodness sake,she’s only twenty-four. As I said,we all make mistakes
Surely she deserves to have at least another crack at making something of her life and raising her children.

Music by Johnny Clegg for the film Goodbye Bafana.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swiIIG0RC0w

Yes she does.She’s only 24,admittedly an adult,but still very young and with two children who need a mother.
From the video it seems that she herself acnowledges that she doesn’t deserve to be on the waiting list for a transplant,so the offer her father has made to give her part of his own liver is her only hope.
Hospitals are full of people who are being treated for illnesses that they could be said to have inflicted on themselves,either through smoking,over-eating or wrong lifestyle choices.Everybody makes mistakes.I’m surprised that she has to go to New Zealand to be assessed for a transplant from a live donor,considering how up-to date medicine seems to be in Australia.
It’s difficult to understand how drugs can take over a person’s life to the extent that she abused the fantastic privilege she’s been given to have a second chance of living a healthy life.I hope that her life can be saved,though it’s difficult to say who should pay for the treatment.