Laura Meckler, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal

Jobs's Transplant Highlights Differing Wait Times

June 19, 2009 at 9:01 pm PT

Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs’s decision to travel to Tennessee for a liver highlights the significant disparities in transplant waiting times across the country–the source of a longstanding controversy over the fairest way to distribute scarce organs.

For liver transplants, the wait is particularly agonizing. Kidney replacements can often be put off for years through dialysis, where a machine does the work of the kidneys. But there is no such treatment for liver disease.

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Tagged with: Apple, controversy, dialysis, disease, frontpage, kidney, Laura Meckler, liver, organ, Steve Jobs, Tennessee, The Wall Street Journal, transplant, wait

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