Forgotten Sleep

CNN ran a story this morning that made my heart break. A British soldier who served in Iraq died last year because he received a double-lung transplant using lungs that had belonged to a smoker. And not just any smoker — a smoker who had, judging by the condition of the lungs, smoked up to 50 cigarettes a day. The damaged lungs already had the beginnings of tumor growth when they were harvested (God, I hate that term), so this poor guy didn’t stand a chance.

Maybe I’m naive, but I was shocked to read that the policy of using smokers’ lungs for transplant is not an uncommon practice in Britain — according to health officials there, if the healthcare system didn’t use them, even more people would die on the waiting list. They tried to make the process sound better by offering assurances that all donated lungs are carefully screened and that this one instance is highly unusual.

But, I still have to cry foul.

If the smoking epidemic is so bad in Britain that the healthcare system is forced to use tainted and potentially lethal organs to “save” someone’s life, there is an enormous public health problem underway. Now, I am not a smoker, but before you start screaming at me, yes, I know that nicotine is addictive. I understand that giving up smoking can, according to data, be more difficult that squashing a heroine habit. But, at some point, as thinking adults, we have to stop and analyze what we’re doing to each other by tolerating this activity.

No one who is ill should be left to the mercies of someone who abused their body. Patients who are weakened by illness should not be forced to accept the ill effects of someone else’s indiscretions. Yes, the lung donor should’ve known he or she was not a qualified donor candidate. But if this is where we have arrived as a society — where there simply aren’t enough non-smokers to donate healthy lungs upon their deaths — then we need to think about what to do next.

A benefit of being part of the free world is that we get to choose what we do, including any self-destructive behaviors. But, I’m a firm believer that my rights stop where someone else’s start. I don’t have the right to impose my own choices on someone else either for good or ill. That’s just simply part of being civilized. Clearly, though, we still have a long way to go if tragedies like this are allowed to happen.

If we’re smart enough and advanced enough to ban smoking in bars and restaurants, prohibit smoking at the entrances and surrounding areas of our hospitals and clinics and actively discourage pregnant women from smoking during gestation, then we’re smart enough to consider how smoking in general affects everyone’s quality of life.

Obviously, we don’t like second-hand smoke in our day-to-day living. We need to do something to make sure that it doesn’t end up a part of our struggles to stay alive.