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June 24, 2004 You ever see a crow picking at something, well, come to Minnesota and look in the cornfields you will see them until your hearts-content. They pick, pick, pick and pick, like vultures. That is how I feel about this subject, I really didn't want to write on it, but it just comes up now and then, and when I hear about it, or see an article written on it, and I have a friend somebody who has it - thus, I do fall under all three categories - I feel I am witnessing the crow at work. The invisible crow, the one in my mind: Fraud's crow if you will. Now, having said that [while getting my frustration out] let me get into the premise of the story, of receiving a transplant. It takes two to five years to get a kidney, and there is something like 60,000-people in the United States that need kidneys: yes, yes, yes: 60,000. That is not a big number compared to cancer patients, or people dying of heart disease, or some lesser diseases. We lost about that number in 10-years of war in Vietnam. So what is the situation and the problem? The situation is we live in a big house that does not look at the problem, which is in the basement: the problem is always underneath the situation, but most people just look at the surface, the situation. Now before I get into solving this problem, and to be quite fair, it is not a big problem from my perspective: I do not want to get into this black, and white thing, of percentages of who gets what, nor do I want to get into the financial gap of we just do not have the money. Nor the crap of what is and what is not moral, it's called ethics now. All these elements get in the way of making it even to the basement steps. I will give you an example, I was going on a trip, and we missed [we being, my wife and I] the plane because the Hotel didn't wake us up, which they acknowledge they were at fault, but didn't want to pay the $500, to restore my new flight, and passage on the ship I was to embark on, once the plane landed. So they fought with me about what was right, and they fought with the agency for not having room to put me on the next boat and they fought with the coordinating people 2000-miles away, and the Agent in the travel department, 2000-miles away. Well this went on all morning, to about 12:30 PM. Finally someone said: "Mr. Siluk will miss his whole vacation should we continue to argue who is right and wrong here, we need to work on getting him back on the plane, and on the ship," such a simple statement, and logic, but it saved the day. Well, this was smart and everyone started looking at what they could do: so I paid $300 of the $500, and the ship took a loss by allowing me on another ship [$700], and the plane took a loss by not charging me fees they normally would charge [$200], and the hotel paid the $200, plus a few days extra [$150] I had to stay, making my vacation possible: so what I am saying: in this long drawn out sketch, what we need to do is work together, and we are not, not in the transplant area: or so it seems to me. Solution: I have a plan A and B [dialysis machines are fine for awhile, in the short term, but we all know, life is extended 10-years with a transplant]. First we could buy them what they need [the money, money, for the transplant]. How do we get it: take it from their SSAN, and they could pay it back later, they will not live to collect it anyways? Not sure what a kidney is worth, lets say: $5000, or $10,000 or if you go to India, maybe a T.V. set, that is what one person sold their kidney for there. Maybe $20,000, plus medical expenses; whatever the price is let's pay it. If we can afford 100-billion on Iraq in one year, that dusty little ungrateful country, let's give to our citizens something called life: give them freedom from them machines they got to hook up to all the time. We are always boasting of freedom, here it comes in a different form, right down to our pockets. Some 60,000-transplantas will not even cost 1-billion I bet. You say, easier said than done. How true that is. But the catch in the brain now is saying: where are you going to get them transplants. Well, throw the ethics in the garbage can; it will not save a soul. Whoever came up with such nonsense? We torture people and then scream ethics. Look around the world, third world countries. Buy them. Give a person in Peru, or Cambodia, or India, or Haiti $10,000, I've been in all these countries, they will sell you one for less, but pay them what you would someone here in America and you will get 60,000 in a week, and thus, feed their family: everyone wins. So someone says, it is not ethical, they most likely are not having the problems. Forget black and white issues, buy the damn transplants from those who what to sell them or give them away. I wouldn't give mine away, just like I wouldn't give blood away free, why, because they charge you for it when you get it - hospitals do not give it away free. If someone wanted to give me a kidney and I had the money, and that person was in India, do you think I'd read the ethics code of America, or Russia or France. If my wife was dying, do you think I'd say, "I got to wait honey, for the donor [for someone to die]," if anything sounds horrid, it is that. It sounds morbid to wait for someone to die, and callous for me to watch my wife shrivel up to nothing in front of my eyes, "if" I could do something about it, and most people can not of course. And to all those do-good-er's, who think otherwise - that their made up ethics code will not permit them to do so, you have not been put into the corner yet, and your day will come. Life living in poverty, or live living with one kidney and $10,000 that equals $50,000 in a third world country, I pick one kidney every time. The only thing worse than death is poverty: I've been there, you try it sometime and tell me different. ------------ About the author: Mr. Siluk is a world traveler, a lover of the mysteries around the world, and has visit many World Heritage Sites, the most recent being Easter Island and the Galapagos. His most recent book: "After Eve," and his 26th book thus far, can be seen on/at Barns and Nobel.com, Amazon.com, Walmart and several other sites. He spends his time between Lima, Peru and St. Paul, Minnesota, and is wroking on two more books: "Stay Down, Old Abram," and "Curse of the Abyss Worm," the second being a suspensful mystery. Visit http://dennissiluk.tripod.com Email: dlsiluk@msn.com Tell a friend about this site! ------------ |
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