Here is my question. Was she in imminent danger of death? If so, then she lived longer than expected. If not, then just bad luck.

#WHAT IF-

she started smoking as a result of the transplant when she was a MILITANT anti-smoker before.

Gives a whole new meaning to "second hand smoke"

Robin -- best joke ever on Newsvine!!

Really, so what you're saying is that people that receive organ transplants SHOULD expect to receive brand new organs, is that about right? Or maybe you're saying that there are so many excess organs floating around out there that a dying person can afford to wait for a "gently used" model. Ever hear the old adage beggars can't be choosers? Maybe the proper question is WHAT PLANET ARE YOU LIVING ON? I guess your posting name says it all. In a perfect world things like this wouldn't happen, problem is we will never live in a perfect world. It's the fly in the ointment of the liberal agenda.

Amen wlockridge, things happen and then we die, perhaps the person got a few more years or months to spend with her family, the article didn't say. Sad to say she was going to die without the lungs, and she might not have made it until a "gently used" set was available.

Ok, well first of all, no one can get a "brand new" organ, unless they happen to be a newborn receiving a newborn's organ. That argument is just plain silly.

But, the WHOLE PURPOSE of receiving a new organ is to save your life. The patient should always be made aware of the risks involved and know if a set of lungs have been smoked in for 30 years. Sure, a smoker's lungs still work, or all smokers would drop dead. The fact is, a smoker's lungs are dirty and nowhere near as healthy as a non-smoker's lungs. Smokers are far more likely to die of lung disease, so putting a smoker's lungs in a patient is completely ridiculous, unless the patient is willing to take that risk.

Of course transplants are hard to come by, and it's not like any patient gets to choose the best set of lungs off of a menu. But that's no excuse not to disclose the potential hazards. That's not a decision the doctor should make on his/her own.

There are well-known risk factors for people who smoke & drink. It should be never be ok to give someone organs that are at risk for cancer - especially since donor recipients are going to be on immunosuppressant drugs that would likely increase their chance of getting cancer!! Would you be okay if an alcoholic donated his liver? I don't expect organs to be perfect, but let's use some friggin common sense, and let's allow the recipients to have all the info to make the decision for themselves.

Who do these doctors think they are?? Some kind of God to make the decision for others?

Ah, KyE, but you already know the answer to your question. They may not think they are God but they surely think they have some of Her prerogatives.

I have been close enough to the edge to peer over. I hoped a med-mal suit would give pause to the arrogant quacks who missed HUGE red flags. Alas, I was told by one to the lawyers who has successfully litigated against the 'health (?!)' system in question that the climate is against the patient. Apparently, the attitude is 'but you're still alive, so be grateful'. This enable the quacks to continue.

brand new organ?? hahhahaha thats so funny.

people are so screwed up. once you are conceived the organ are being used, even at 4 month pregnant the heart has been used quite considerably since it has to pump blood thruout the new born.

people dont you think a doctor and see BLACK tar in a lung after is been pulled from a donor, im sure the doctor look at it before placing it into the patient.

of course pnuemonia will set in after a surgery of this type, its only common sense.

the patient was going to die regardless they just prolonged the inevitable.

Ah well people just dont want to think anymore.

wlockridge:

So you see people receiving organ transplants as "beggars"? That says a lot more about you than it does about this issue!

wlockridge,

Would you want a blood donation from someone who was exposed to AIDS? Smoking comes with HUGE risks and a transplant recipient should be given full disclosure of the health of the donor. Obviously there will be issues with organ transplants, but there is a difference between receiving a used organ and an abused organ.

The fact that the donor smoked is not the problem here, the problem is that the donor died of PNEUMONIA!! The lungs were diseased, they are what killed the donor!! So let's just put the thing that killed the donor into the recipient!!!

What do you want for nothing... your money back? This is the British Health Care System.

I used to work for a family ran business where the wife of the business owner needed a heart transplant. She died because a heart wasn't available.

Whether the lungs were in prestine condition or not, she really was in no position to be choosy when she opted for getting the transplant done in the first place.

What did the smoker die of is what I would like to know. Maybe the smoker died od pneumonia.

They were taking a risk just for transplanting organs from someone that was probably no less than 20 years older than she was in the first place.

Maybe they should forbid smokers from donating in the first place, but then maybe there wouldn't have been any lungs available for transplant for her and making so she didn't have any chance at all.

Since both of her lungs had to be replaced then her immune system was probably not all that strong in the first place.

For all of you medical apologists and "can do no wrong" doctor advocates, do any of you know what a lung transplant costs? Huge amount of money, but that is not the only cost. Having your chest opened and your lungs changed over, is also huge. Recovery time and discomfort. How about the hope that is implied in getting a new set of lungs for someone who has suffered for years from an illness that makes you feel like you're drowning, constantly.

I do not think it is outlandish to expect to, at least, know whether someone spent years abusing the very organs you are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars receiving. I, for one would like for all of you who think the medical profession is some sort of good samaritan enterprise to pull you heads out of your anal sphincter and realize it is a business. Their first and foremost purpose is not to save your life. It is to get your money. Don't think to tell me I'm just cynical. It is true. Most doctors straddle the fine line between incompetent and totally uncaring. Few have your best interests at heart.

She should get a great lawyer and sue everyone involved, regardless of what the medical experts say. Hell, I smoked for twenty-five years and don't want the lungs I've got now.

To wlockridge and JohninTexas......yes, you absolutely have the right to get an organ that is in good shape and not diseased or abused....you don't transplant an alcoholics liver and you don't transplant a 30 year smokers lungs.....what kind of moron would think otherwise????? Oh and for the record.....read the article before shooting your mouth off JohninTexas....the article CLEARLY states the lungs were transplanted in Feb. and the recipient died in July of pneumonia.

you absolutely have the right to get an organ that is in good shape and not diseased or abused...

You also have the right to take your transplant business ELSEWHERE.

I don't think, given the wait list in most regions, those seeking transplants are so discriminating.

big promo for socialized medecine.

You get what you pay for.

Oh wait.. :P

that he died of pneumonia is a big point here. already big time damaged lungs.

buffalo bob-937857

If you can read, you can succeed.

The story does not say that the donor died of pneumonia. In fact it doesn't list the donors cause of death at all. It does say however that the lungs were functioning normally. The recipient died of pneumonia, a not unexpected outcome of a double lung transplant.

To all of the antismoking zealots

Get an education. While smoking greatly raises the probability of lung disease, it doesn't guaranty it. Plenty of other activities can lead to diseased lungs.

What if the donor had worked in the chemical industry, or a toll booth? Either would raise the probability of the lungs being damaged. Does the donors life history need to be provided?

The young lady was a "beggar," in the sense that she needed someone to donate the very stuff of life to her. She didn't have the luxury of being choosy.

It depends how much he/she smoked, still, do you know "how defective, disgusting and full of cancer" lungs with cystic fibrosis are?

romillo, you hae the attitude of a defective, disgusting person.

Cystic fibrosis is an unasked for affliction.

Smoking is a choice. We've known for decades how addictive nicotine and the 'additives' are. Lighting up that first smoke is a conscious decision to commit slow suicide.

romillo:

CF is NOT cancer! Educate yourself before you spout off such nonsense! Furthermore, this young woman died of pneumonia, a condition often associated with reduced lung function. Patients unable to expel fluid and particulate build-up from the lungs can contract "mechanical" or "hospital" pneumonia. So the question is this: if this is what happened, how much can be attributed to the CF and how much to the known and well-documented decrease in lung function attributed to smoking, even in otherwise apparently healthy lungs: "What’s more, smoking further impairs the ability to cough or expel these secretions. A study of 165 SCI survivors found that smokers tested significantly lower in both the amount of air they were able to cough out, as well as the force with which they were able to expel it." (http://www.craighospital.org/sci/mets/smoking.asp). ... "Millions of microscopic hairs (cilia) cover the surface of the cells lining your bronchial tubes. The hairs beat in a wave-like fashion to clear your airways of normal secretions, but irritants such as tobacco smoke paralyze the cilia, causing secretions to accumulate." (http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/pneumonia/DS00135/DSECTION=risk-factors).

10% of smokers get lung cancer, but 90% of lung cancers are caused by smoking. Emphysema and other disease of the cardiovascular system are more common. Before they do these things, they determine whether or not the risks outweigh the potential benefits.

They're not going to give diseased lungs that have pneumonia in them already unless someone didn't check something. If you die of hepatitis they are not transplanting your liver, or probably anything else.

The smoker probably died, as most transplant donors do, of an unexpected accident or illness that would not normally effect the organs being donated. There is a lot of inflammation and stress caused by any transplant and it's hard to know for certain that the donor being a smoker had anything to do with it.

In other words: if a bird @!$%#s on your house and your roof falls in, you can't assume the bird had anything to do with it. It's called empiricism and many Americans lack the ability to define it or grasp how to tell the difference between causation and correlation.

This is a false analogy. No correlation has been demonstrated between bird feces and roof collapses. There is plenty of demonstrable correlation, however, between smoking and incidents of decreased lung function and pneumonia. Ergo, it is reasonable to examine the case for possible contribution to the death from the condition of the lungs. As any small amount of research will show, lung damage ... especially in its early stages ... often can only be detected by tests for reduced lung function. A postmortem physical examination is useless for detecting this early damage.

The lung donor wasn't 30 years old, but s/he had been a smoker for 30 years. Still, those lungs should never have been used.

This is not an anti-smoking tyraid, tracelet. It's about not disclosing dangers to a patient. Yes, the patient's lungs were likely in far worse shape with CF. The patient may indeed have been "trading up." The point is not that the donor smoked, per se, but that the lungs had a known danger that should have been disclosed to the patient. Just like a liver transplant patient should know if the donor was a massive drinker, or if any donor was a serious drug user, or had innocent genetic issues that could cause problems. The patient should know what they're getting and make the decision based on the facts. The patient has the right to decide if they'll chance getting a healthier organ, knowing they could die waiting. A lot of people may want to save their families the enormous expense of an organ transplant if there's reasonable evidence that the organ is not healthy enough to extend their life much longer.

Yes, the patient should get the information about the organ that is available for transplantation...and the patient should decide if they want it or prefer to gamble on waiting in the hope that a more ideal transplant organ will become available in time for them.

We have friends whose son needed a kidney transplant. His kidneys had a defect that caused a gradual buildup in his muscles of some element that the kidney was not able to process. But he had 25 active, healthy years before any pain and impairment developed. He was fortunate to receive a living organ transplant from a friend. The remarkable thing is that his own kidneys -- his defective kidneys -- were transplanted into another person who was in dire need of an organ transplant. She was given full disclosure about the medical problems that would develop over time if she accepted the kidneys. But she happily said "yes" because those imperfect kidneys could still grant her another 20+ years of life. Perhaps she'll receive another kidney transplant in the future. But at least she is alive now and is able to see her children grow up.

Let the patient decide.

Wow - the donor was 30 and smoked for 3 decades. Obviously this story is pumped up drama. Are they saying the kid was fresh from the womb and sucking on a Marlboro?? (One decade = 10 years, thus 3 decades = 30 years) Maybe the dude was smoking for 2 decades...maybe even one ...but if my lungs had petered out ...and the only pair available was from a 30 year old smoker....I'll take 'em! Breathing is still better than not breathing.

Mark:

It doesn't say the donor was 30. It says the donor smoked for 30 years.

TRACLET - I have CF and I am 32. I know two others w/ CF and they are 34 and 37. All of us are living life, working full time jobs and not ready to kick the bucket any time soon.

Carrying the genetic mutation for CF does not make you an expert, it makes you a carrier along w/ 1 in 25 other people with Northern European decent. Please don't speak on behalf of CF patients - you are not well informed.

The arguement should not be whether or not the family has the right to be upset that it was a smoker of 30 years and their lungs, it is the fact that they weren't told this prior to the procedure. There are a lot of risks w/ transplants and the patient should be well informed of all available information prior to the surgery.

I am not nor did I claim to be an expert. I just mentioned my carrying the gene I did not mean to imply it. 4 people between immediate and extended people have it now. 2 have died from it..that is 6. A lot of my family had cf friends they met a groups or through the hospital. I didnt say you could not live past 25 I am well aware. I was using an average of my own personal experiences and not spouting medical info or claiming to. I was totally off thinking that the donor that was 30 and a smoker...not a smoker for 30 years. I even wondered why they said she smoked 3 decades..duh......In my own unique sets of experience have taught me that in the transplant world the lungs of a 30 year old smoker are not going to be passed up. Did not at all mean to say you could not live longer and healthier. My group seems to have a lot of the real bad lungs where its been trans or die.

No you didn't!

"the lungs of a thirty year old smoker can be fairly healthy" ... the documented research says otherwise. Just because lungs appear healthy or are asymptomatic, one cannot assume they are healthy. Cilia damage alone ... which occurs almost as soon as a person begins smoking ... predisposes the lung to decreased capacity both in terms of air volume and the ability to expel mucosa, particulates, etc. (this is the cause of the famous "smoker's cough, as well as many, many cases of pneumonia, bronchitis, etc. every year). I live with a 35 year smoker who annually gets clear x-rays, etc., of his lungs. As a result, I have made a concerted effort to educate myself regarding the possibility of smoking for an extended period and maintaining lung health. Here's the conclusion I have reached. All those 80 year old smokers who die from "natural causes" such as heart attacks every year would most likely have become 100 year old smokers with a much higher quality of life (increased energy, activity levels, etc.). It's very tempting ... because my loved one smokes ... to believe otherwise, but unfortunately the evidence just doesn't support such blind faith.

In the terms of what is available for transplant they are above average

What's wrong with allowing full disclosure and letting the patient decide for themselves? I think that's all that most of us see as wrong here. If I choose to pass up the liver of an alcoholic, that is my choice to make, not a doctor's.

The person died of Pneumonia. I am not even a medical student I know pneumonia scars and damages the lungs, and this person died of it so I am assuming the lungs were in kind of bad shape!!!

I said I am for full disclosure, I'm just saying that in these cases, even with full disclosure, I think that the decision would be the same. And health providers have a duty to provide full disclosure But to also make sure that the patient understands that full disclosure.

My main point was that even though it sounds terrible to transplant a liver from an alcoholic or someone with hepatitis C or lungs from a patient who smoked for 30 years, that it is important to realize that it may represent the best chance for the patient to live. If the patient does not understand that, then it is not full disclosure either.

Now I do not have experience yet with transplant boards or much with any transplant patients pre-transplant, I would hope that in most cases it is policy to explain risks and benefits of transplants and the types of transplants that may be available when the patient is put on the waiting list for a transplant. Full disclosure should occur at this time rather than later during the rush of when the organ becomes available. I agree if this is not being done on a regular basis that there is area for improvement for transplant boards at hospitals worldwide.

Broncoguy, i did not question that if we know if the patient died of pneumonia. What i question is from the details of this article we do not know if the reason the patient ended up with pneumonia was from the transplanted lungs being from a donor who smoked for 30 years.

Patients with healthy lungs get pneumonia, its an infection caused typically by viruses and bacteria that infiltrate the lung tissue. there are many reasons that the risk of this happening can go up. One is that the donor's lungs could have been more susceptible due to years of smoking, another huge susceptibility that this patient would have is impaired immune functioning from transplant rejection drugs that make someone more susceptible to all types of infection.

So yes we know that the patient died from pneumonia complications but we cannot be sure of why the patient got pneumonia from the details of this article.

If you really are a medical student (at least a competent one), then you know what "mechanical" or "hospital" pneumonia is. The fact is, healthy lungs that can expel bacteria- or viral-laden mucosa are far less likely to become infected. Do healthy lungs get pneumonia? Sure, but the chances increase dramatically the more lung capacity and function has been compromised. This patient should have been given a choice ... had she been, then there would be no debate. Medical professionals need to realize that their degrees do not give them the right to exclude their patients from the decision making process, no matter how much those professionals may feel they "know best." It is still the patient's body and the patient's right, so long as he or she is competent to do so, to make the final decisions about treatment. This means the patient should be given the information necessary to make an informed decision. The medical professional who does this has fulfilled his or her ethical and professional obligations in the matter and should then respect the patient's autonomy regarding his or her own body!

Prof1: a 6 month wait in Canada for elective surgery...get your facts straight & stop listening to Sara Palin who know absolutely crap about health care. If one need surgery for something that is life threatening...they get it right away...Get the facts correct Refusing life sustaining meds is also incorrect!!! Canada has Medicare...we have Medicare..We copied their Medicare system in this country

There's a six month wait in this country to see a neurologist. A four month wait to see an endocrinologist. The only neurologist I was able to take my child to see within a week turned out to be a horrible doctor with a God complex, who touched my child inappropriately, called her a jerk, and took joy in telling me she had epilepsy.

In addition to the long wait, the charge was huge. And the seizure that caused my child to visit a neurologist in the first place, made her uninsurable.

That's a sample of healthcare in this country. Not to get off track, but Prof1 brought it up.

so commit the most selfish act humanly possible,,,,,,keep your organs for rotting or burning instead of what. this makes me sick and is not proamerica your proself and screw the rest. r u a christian, too

They(the lungs) can be healthy it depends on how much he smoked, where he lived, how much exercise that person got and his genetics. My father smoked 3 packs a day and at 65 the doctors where totally amazed at how healthy his heart and lungs were. In his case I think his genes played a role since his family has a long line of living past 85 even hundreds of years ago.

Most people are not born with “cancer cells”, but any cell in your body is capable of becoming cancerous.

No one can say whether or not we are all born with genes that predispose us to develop cancer. There are a variety of genes that are contributing factors to cancer, but there is no single gene that guarantees you will get cancer.

So we are not all born with cancer cells or a "cancer gene" but everyone has a transcription factor called p53 that is important in regulating your normal, healthy cell cycle. If something interrupts its activity, your cells are more likely to divide incorrectly and your risk of developing cancer increases. This can happen because the gene that codes for p53 (TP53) is damaged, or because something else, like a virus or another protein interacts with p53.

This is only one of thousands of ways cancer can happen. Your risk of cancer increases with age, so it’s safe to say that the chances of being born with cancer are much lower than your chances of developing it later in life.

So quit calling people dummies when you apparently have no clue what you are talking about! And it's "dummies" not "dummy's". you ignorant baffoon!!

Thanks BRONCOGUY.

dman is the dummy!He really just wanted to rant about democrats and liberals. There was no real reason for his post other than to inflame people. He's a troll.

your ignorance is typical of your generation....the old ones are worrse than the kids anymore.....at least they can be taught....at least you peple will be gone quicker. less ignorant people=better country

the article does not say the donor died of pneumonia, the organ recipient died several months after the transplant of pneumonia.

there are rules in this country and a 30 year smoking history is not one that rules out lungs for transplants. Here is another example, we use livers from patients with hepatis C virus for transplant in this Country. It is about giving the patient the best chance of survival, when a patient is high up on a transplant list it means there condition is critical and they need a transplant ASAP, so a diseased organ is often better than no organ.

And to be clear, I am for Full disclosure, this should have been discussed at some point with the patient. Either when she was placed on the transplant waiting list or when the organ became available.

What are you doing? writing a @!$%#ing book about her life!!!

Wow. No, I'm pointing out to the Associated Press that someone should have a command of the English language to edit the article so it makes sense.

The reader doesn't know who died of pneumonia: Lyndsey Scott or the smoker. That's important because smoking scars the lungs making middle-aged and elderly smokers much more prone to pneumonia and other lung ailments. Pneumonia to those with scarred lungs is dangerous. This disclosure should be made known to the patient so they can make a reasonable decision to either accept the transplant or remain on the waiting list.

The Associated Press is a world-wide organization that should set a standard in journalism. This is the problem with mainstream journalism today...there's no proper research or writing. They just throw anything up without either completing the story or seeing it makes sense.

The doctor should have told her, that's the problem. The patient should have been given the opportunity to decide if she wanted them or not. That's the issue that the family and some of us on this thread are debating. Not the seriousness of CF.