Swine flu has been given temporary respite from medical debate, dampened down with the news that Gareth Anderson, a 19 year old Irish man suffering from liver failure following a weekend of binge drinking, is to be moved from Ulster to a London hospital for closer monitoring. Gareth has been refused a transplant on the grounds that patients must be alcohol-free for six months beforehand. Given that his official prognosis is that he may only have weeks left to live, Gareth has very little chance of sweating out the required period of abstinence and becoming eligible for the list. In short, if the rules aren’t relaxed, and he is given a chance for suitable donor to be found, he’s probably going to die.
So where does Britain stand on this one? It’s a moral quagmire that everybody seems reluctant to set foot on. Even Northern Ireland’s Minister for Health, Michael McGimpsey, has refused to bow to the pressure to skip that particular page in the rule book, and met questions with a rather watery response.
"It's very much a matter for clinicians, I do not intervene, I am merely a politician.” (BBC News 20/08/09)
The frequency and heaviness of Gareth’s drinking is still somewhat unclear. His father is running the campaign to over-turn the ruling, and parents are rarely privvy to the full extent of their children’s indulgences. Even if they are, they are hardly likely to turn the whole truth over to the public for perusal.
So the official spin is that he only drank socially, and in similar amounts to his friends. Now that binge drinking seems to have become something of a modern-day rite of passage for so many, this may not be condonable, but it is to an extent, understandable. Gareth, it seems, hadn’t waged the kind of ceaseless campaign of abuse on his body that usually results in organ failure, and as confirmed by liver specialist Dr Chris Record of Newcastle General Hospital, his is an unusual case:
"We're not usually talking about 19-year-olds when we're applying this rule because most patients who develop liver failure from alcohol have been drinking heavily for more than 10 years because this is how long it takes for serious live damage to develop," (BBC News 20/08/09)
Gareth is far from blameless, but he was unaware that his system wasn’t going to put it all down to youthful indulgence and forgive him. A chance is all that’s really on offer here anyway, a new liver isn’t something you can just place an order for, and waiting lists come with priorities, some undoubtedly a good deal more pressing.
What he’s been up to isn’t especially sensible and far from admirable, but it is generally considered, at least amongst most of his peers, normal. Whether it is in fact, normal to base your reputation, your weekends and your ability to function socially around alcohol, is a separate issue. And one he surely doesn’t deserve to be made a poster boy for by dieing?
Comments
well i suppose it is more than good enough to break the rules on that one, but in the end people have to live with the consequences of what they are doing. there are probably many already on the list waiting desperately just like Gareth. Surely it is terrible but the problem is that you should be aware that if you go on a week long binge you may end up in hospital, in fact that can happen to you after just one day of drinking! There is no doubt that he should be on the list to even get a chance, but why getting there in the first place.....
I 100% agree with you about consequences, but I think the agnoising wait for a donor, the lengthy and intrusive operation, the long recovery process and the nation wide scrutiny will probably serve as punishment enough.
And yes, like you say, who do people end up doing this to themselves in the first place? Because thousands do. But thousands more knock back far too much booze and remain relatively healthy. Why do we consider it necessary to drink so much in this country?
I also agree. So what, there is a consensus amoung some people that "binge drinking" is acceptable; but there is also the damning evidence of the effects alcohol has on the body - particularly the liver.
The rules should be adhered to. More needs to be done to curb this sort of behaviour and saying "Oh, we'll make some exceptions if you ruin your liver", isn't exactly the right way to go about it.
Those who haven't abused their livers, those are the ones who if anyone are rightfully deserving of transplants, not those stupid and ignorant enough to think that they can always rely on the NHS to supplement their stupidity.
I think you're right that more needs to be done to curb this sort of behaviour, an abundance of cheap booze and a deluge of sexy marketing campaigns are partly to blame, but we've always had quite a booze reliant culture in this country.
But I think this boy should be given a chance. Yes, he's been stupid, but he's very young, it goes with the territory, and whilst I don't think he should be bumped to the top of the list, denying him any sort of shot at getting a transplant seems incredibly harsh.
Alcohol. A subject close to my heart, for one reason or another.
Whilst the young man in your post gets the liver you demand which non-drinker on the transplant waiting list will die?
A place on that list is only a chance, it is in no way a guarantee that this boy will be given a liver. Waiting lists have priorities, and an organ that does become available is allocated to the most suitable person.
Also, I doubt very much whether everybody on that list is suffering from a non-alcohol related condition, the rules currently state that alcoholics are eligible provided they have abstained for 6 months.