Living Donors Online Message Board
Living Donation Discussion and News => Living Donation in the News => Topic started by: Clark on May 17, 2011, 06:28:13 PM
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http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/05/apathy-causes-kidney-patients-to-die-needlessly/238840/
Apathy Causes Kidney Patients to Die Needlessly
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The desperation of those who need kidneys is easy to understand. Even if dialysis is working, it's a costly, grueling, and dangerous process, as Robin Fields showed so memorably in the December 2010 issue of The Atlantic. That's why it's maddening that the status quo in kidney donations remains in effect, even though it could easily be improved in ways that leave no one worse off.
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The failure to better address this problem doesn't say much for our political system. Congress spends so much time arguing about hot button issues of little actual import, tweaking complicated laws in ways that advantage special interests, and obsessing over grand legislation that passes once in a generation, like the health-care bill. In doing so, it ignores a lot of smaller bore legislation that would save money for all of us and improve life for a lot of suffering people.
On the subject of kidney donations, and other issues like it, our legislators should change their attitudes in this way: if there is a discreet problem that can be substantially improved by the right legislation, and it doesn't require a substantial ideological fight or touch on the culture wars or cost a lot of money, it ought to become a top Congressional priority, rather than going ignored in favor of more ambitious or controversial matters. Until that happens, a lot of people are going to continue dying in a system more expensive and ultimately less moral than the alternative.