I SO hate this style of reporting. They make me read through 10 paragraphs of human interest pap, when what I really want is to learn something about the medicine that the headline promises. Then a couple of paragraphs of concrete info, then dive back into another vignette. I didn't click into the article to read shocking sad stories, I came to learn something, and the writer is making it unnecessarily difficult to do so.
It's so jarring getting a peek into the mind of someone who sees the world this way. Take this, for example:
>Globally, there are perhaps 20 (mostly male) specialized surgeons capable of face transplants
What an extraordinarily petty way to announce your bitter, cynical world view.
Or announcing your racial allegiance with the capitalisation of "Black" vs lower case "whiteness", or indeed the assertion that made it necessary to bring race into this at all: that White people are to blame (as per usual) for low organ donorship among African Americans.
In 1967 Louis Washkansky lived 18 days after receiving the world's first heart transplant. Today Bert Janssen has lived 41 years with a transplanted heart.
Progress is hard won, and the first people to undergo new procedures are the ones who have it hardest.
The article seems heavy on blame but it seems the people involved are just trying to do the best they can for patients who are in an extremely grave situation where good outcomes are unlikely.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 20.4 ms ] thread>Globally, there are perhaps 20 (mostly male) specialized surgeons capable of face transplants
What an extraordinarily petty way to announce your bitter, cynical world view.
Or announcing your racial allegiance with the capitalisation of "Black" vs lower case "whiteness", or indeed the assertion that made it necessary to bring race into this at all: that White people are to blame (as per usual) for low organ donorship among African Americans.
It must be exhausting.
Progress is hard won, and the first people to undergo new procedures are the ones who have it hardest.
We don't understand the immune system enough to make transplants less risky.
We don't seem to know if QoL is better between those who take the procedure vs those who don't.
The ongoing costs to supporting these operations are crazy and the dysfunctional US system doesn't help.