Teen rejected as an organ donor — for being gay
There are no words to express how furious I am at this. I'm sitting at the kitchen table getting ready to go to work. I've worked on a transplant unit for ten years. When I arrived to work, I will interact with any number of pre and post transplant patients. Some of them are on dialysis and I will maybe perform that service a least dozen times for them before transplant. I get to know them. Some are in liver failure, and have a Goldilocks zone of their own-- can't be too well, can't be too sick. It's a long death.
I've seen the hollowed eyed, or falsely cheerful disappointed leave when, after called in, it's found the organ is not suitable for some reason.
This was a young man. In dying of the horror of being continually rejected, by donating he would have saved lives. That we still do this- this rejection--despite the incredible need, despite it would have giving, perhaps, some small solace to his loved ones by providing a small amount of meaning to his death, well let's just say I'm going to work and raising hell. As far as I knew we didn't reject donors for being Gay. We accept many "high risk" donors.
My deepest and most heartfelt condolences to the ones he left behind. My heart is broken, again, for a stranger.
As KCCI News first reported earlier this week, the Iowa teen died in July of 2013 after “years of bullying” for being gay. After he attempted suicide in his family’s Pleasant Hill home, he was briefly put on life support to repair his organs so they’d be acceptable for transplant. His last moments were in service of others. Months before his death, he’d decided to become a donor.
Speaking a year later to local reporter Shaina Humphries, Betts’ mother, Sheryl Moore, shared a letter thanking the family for Betts’ gifts – his right kidney to a 49-year-old woman, his left to an 11-year-old boy, his liver and lungs to others. “I was very happy to hear that a 14-year-old boy got his heart,” she said. “He would have really liked that.”
But because of inane, outdated FDA regulations going back to the earliest years of the AIDS crisis, Betts’ eyes were deemed ineligible for donation. The FDA refuses to let men who’ve had sexual contact with other men donate blood or donate tissue because they’re considered a high risk. In March, the family of Rohn Neugebauer, a 48-year-old man who’d raised thousands for the Center for Organ Recovery and Education, was told by the same organization that he was declined from donating “lungs, kidneys, or other potentially lifesaving body parts” after his sudden death of a heart attack — because of his orientation.
When she had a similar conversation about her son, Moore told the donor network, “My response was something to the effect of ‘No, he’d never had a boyfriend. I’d never even known of him going on a date. But then I was like, I don’t know. He was 16 years old.” And with that admission, the network said it had to assume he’d been sexually active, and so his eyes and tissue were rejected. She says, “My initial feeling was very angry because I didn’t understand why my 16 year-old son’s eyes couldn’t be donated just because he was gay.”
http://www.salon.com/2014/08/15/teen_rejected_as_an_organ_donor_for_being_gay/
= new reply since forum marked as read
Saving lives and being compassionate, noooo, that's not for us... 
