That "Mermaid" girl has already had TWO kidney transplants and she is only eight and will likely need others as she continues to deteriorate and age. That's TWO adults who didn't get a kidney who will either remain dependent on dialysis and gravely ill, or they will die. The little Siamese twins who were recently separated got a new kidney as well. ANY kyd getting treatment at any location of the hundreds of St Jude charity hospitals will zoom to the top of the list. One thing that pisses me off more than anything else regarding organ donations and kyds, is that religious lobby group that keeps that law on the books regarding water head and brain dead bayees who generally only live hours or days, can NOT be organ donors EVEN WHEN their parents desire that they donate. Most of these bubble headed kyds have relatively healthy bodies and "normal" internal organs, so they could save God only knows how many lives.
Yet, one of the criteria for donation is that they are over a month old (I think it's a month, possibly only a week) and are considered LEGALLY brain dead. Since most of them don't live for more than a few days at the most, then that alone rules that whole bunch out. The ones who do manage to make it to a month, generally have a partially functioning brain
stem, but often no actual brain at all or maybe a section of a brain, which only controls rudimentary functions similar to what a person in a persistent vegetative state would have like involuntary blinking, involuntary physical reaction to stimuli, and sometimes breathing, coughing, hiccups, etc........SOMETIMES the latter, sometimes not even that. At this time, HUNDREDS of baybees who are born every year and all die within days because of horrific neurological birth defects, can NOT be organ donors, because of religious fundies. I vote that we give THOSE kyds preferential treatment and honor their parents' right to donate their organs.
I have changed my views on organ donation. I think that organ donation should be mandatory when any possible healthy organs can be salvaged and not even mention it to the famblee, just cut the shit out and be done with it. I don't think that emotional loved ones need to worry with it or make any decisions about it either, while live people are sitting in wheelchairs or on their death beds while the famblee in mourning mulls it over. There should be strict guidelines such as at least two doctors signing off on it, and as strict a criteria about it as if it is a decision to pull the plug on someone. I do NOT think that people like that Van Houten woman should be allowed to lay in a coma for TWENTY EIGHT YEARS at the tune of 300k a year too, when if they if they had pulled the plug and cut out her organs many years ago, other people may have lived. Until then though, organs should go to the best matched and most critically ill and whether they are a kyd or adult should be of NO consequence.