I hope Dennis Jones has a great Christmas, because there’s a good chance it will be his last.
Thanks to the transplant ethics committee at the University of Rochester’s Wilmot Cancer Center.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Dennis Jones is called “Grampa” today, but back in the day, when he was doing missions out of a firebase in the jungles of South Vietnam, they called him “Airman.”
That’s when he got the Agent Orange.
That’s when they all got it.
A powerful defoliant, sprayed over the canopy, to take away the cover and concealment of guys in pajamas intent on killing Americans. So it might have saved the GIs then, but it sure came back to haunt them later.
That’s where the cancer came from. A lot of them got it. And Dennis Jones got it. And for years he’s been fighting it. And where it stands now is they’ve got to take out his liver to stop it.
Or it will stop him.
The problem is, you need a liver. And the docs aren’t going to give him one. Apparently, veteran or not, you get old enough and they don’t put you on the list. Sorry, Charlie.
And that’s where Dennis Jones was, looking at a short ride to a deep hole. His liver is on a glide path to failure, and unless he can find one on his own, he’s going down with it.
Which got to his buddy. Another guy from the special police. Another old guy from the special police. He was touched by Dennis Jones’ story and said he’d donate. They can do that. It’s a living donation. They take part of a liver out of a person, and put it in another person, and the two parts of the liver grow to serve the needs of two people.
But at screening, Dennis Jones’ friend from the special police was disqualified. He turned out to have some health problems of his own, and his body couldn’t bear the transplant.
And Dennis Jones was back where he started.
A wife he loves, kids, and grandkids, and a ticking clock.
Then the friend from the special police came back and said he’d been talking about it in his family and it turned out that he had a nephew, a veteran like Dennis Jones, who’d be willing to do it. That was a guy named Ronald Pecora.
And Ronald Pecora did pretty well on the screening. At the first round and the second round, it was thumbs up.
But there was a problem.
Last summer, Ronald Pecora shot a man. It was over a woman. Ronald Pecora was stalking her, and he shot down her boyfriend.
It was horrible and wrong, and a good and innocent man went through a lot to come back from the bullet Ronald Pecora put in him.
The problem was, it looked like Ronald Pecora was going away. He was going to be put in prison. That meant, he being away, that he couldn’t donate.
A second big disappointment for Dennis Jones.
And he was talking about it a family gathering. How his best and maybe last chance at life was gone.
Because, other than the liver, Dennis Jones is healthy and strong. And, though an old man, he thinks he’s got another 10 or 15 years in him.
To love on that wife, and look after those kids and grandkids.
But Ronald Pecora is going to prison, and they don’t do transplants in prison.
Dennis Jones’ nephew heard that, at the family gathering, and did some thinking. And he said there was something he wanted to look into.
The nephew is an assistant district attorney – a prosecutor – in the same office that was bringing charges against Ronald Pecora.
So the nephew went to his boss – the district attorney – and to the defense lawyer, and to the judge, and wondered if maybe there was something they could do.
And this is what they agreed on.
Ronald Pecora would plead guilty, and accept a fitting sentence, but that sentence would not begin for a couple or three months, so that the transplant could be done.
It was a godsend to Dennis Jones and his family.
It was the miracle they had prayed for. It was an extension on Grandpa’s life.
And then the ethics committee got hold of it.
A bunch of people who sit in a room and think deep thoughts. A bunch of people who never met Dennis Jones or Ronald Pecora, or looked at the pictures of the family Dennis Jones treasures.
Those are the folks who said he had to die.
Oh, that’s not exactly how they phrased it. But that’s how it works out. You need a liver to live, you need a donor for a liver, the hospital won’t find him a donor, he found a donor, and the death panel decided that donor was ethically ineligible.
Why?
Well, the hospital won’t say, but the district attorney and the defense lawyer – people who helped shepherd the original arrangement – said that it was because the two or three months deferment in the commencement of the prison sentence was an inducement to make the donation. The ethics panel said that the donor was, in effect, being paid or compensated for being a donor. He isn’t truly doing it of his own free will, because this delay is dangling over his head.
His lawyer says that’s a bunch of crap.
Ronald Pecora isn’t going to spend a single day less in prison. He will go away for exactly the same length of time. The lawyer says his client offered to be a donor before he pled guilty – before he knew he was going to prison – and is getting neither punishment nor reward for being a donor. It is something he truly wants to do.
And something which he is uniquely qualified to do.
Even under the current circumstances. Which is, with him in jail. When the University of Rochester’s Wilmot Cancer Center ethics committee called off the donation, the judge called off the deal, and Ronald Pecora is in the county jail, awaiting sentencing to state prison.
Which is good. That’s where he deserves to be.
But even in jail, according to his lawyer, he wants to go ahead with the transplant. Nothing has changed on his end.
And the sheriff has said that his staff will support the transplant any way necessary. If there needs to be a deputy guarding his hospital room, fine. No worries.
Dennis Jones wants the transplant. Ronald Pecora wants the transplant. The prosecution wants the transplant. The defense wants the transplant. Dennis Jones’ sweetheart, children and grandchildren want the transplant.
And the ethics committee wants to play God.
And they’ve given Dennis Jones the thumbs down.
And Dennis Jones is heartbroken. He appreciates the hospital, he believes it’s saved his life twice. He is very afraid of angering the hospital, and wants to stay on everybody’s good side over there. So he’s not going to say anything.
But I will.
The ethics committee is wrong, and it is going to kill this man. And every person who hears this story will share that opinion. Because it’s a matter of common sense, a reflection of the values of our society. We save lives in America. We love people. We fight for them. We try to keep them alive.
And if a bunch of deep thinkers in a committee meeting have lost sight of that, then they have become useless. Ethics divorced from the collective judgment of the community are fatally flawed.
And any hospital that finds itself making decisions that steal 10 or 15 years of life and love from a man and his family is a hospital with a problem.
There is an opportunity for the committee to revisit this decision.
The circumstance of Ronald Pecora has changed. He is locked up. He is getting nothing for doing this. There is no inducement. There is no impediment. There is no reason to say no.
Hopefully, the leadership of the University of Rochester will grasp that.
And give Dennis Jones a Christmas miracle.
And spare itself the shame of being this region’s Grinch.